Eating in Spain

          In 1935 W. Somerset Maugham, my favourite writer, wrote a book about Spain called Don Fernando. One of the chapters was devoted to food. 

In Andalucía, Maugham observed, ‘you eat romantically rather than to the satisfaction of your palate.’ This, I would say, is no longer true. Take the example of Pepa y Pepe, a pleasant tapas bar that spills on to one of the streets in Málaga’s Old Town. The food there is very good: you can have albóndigas (meatballs) in a rich tomato sauce, and they do good fried fish like gambas pil pil (prawns with garlic and chilli cooked in lots of oil). 

There’s little romance about Pepa y Pepe, though. Most of the diners are foreigners and it’s a magnet for the street performers and beggars of this fine city. In the space of an hour one Tuesday evening six men of varying degrees of misery asked me for money outside this establishment. 

My interaction with one of these individuals had an element of comedy about it. He was a dirty, odd looking man, with a yellow tie round his neck but no shirt. His trade was shining shoes. After a rebuff from another group, he approached me and we locked eyes. I shook my head. He then looked down at my feet, shrugged his shoulders and looked me in the eyes again. He had an aghast expression on his face, as if to say ‘Come on! How can you walk around like that in this beautiful place?!’ I refused a second time, though, and he trudged off in search of less stubborn tourists. 

While the albóndigas in Pepe y Pepe were tasty, I would say that ordering meat dishes in Andalucía is not necessarily a wise move. In Cádiz, for instance, I ventured into a quiet place one evening and ordered a media ración (half portion) of meatballs in Pedro Ximenez sauce. The meatballs bore the awful signs of having been microwaved: some were lukewarm, others cold. I guess they’d been hanging around for a bit too, for they had an off-putting discolouration in the middle. The PX sauce had an unpleasantly gloopy texture, too, kind of like mint jelly. The only thing that was hot was the fried potatoes. I’ve rarely been in such a hurry to leave a restaurant. 

I also had a cold plate of rabo de toro (stewed oxtail) in Málaga, which left me crestfallen, for it’s a thing of beauty when done properly. Another dish which is hit or miss is patatas bravas. These can be great, as long as the sauce that is served with the fried potatoes is spicy and based on tomatoes. Too often, though, you are presented with an unappetising mixture of spicy sauce and mayonnaise. 

 These experiences lead me to think that Maugham was wrong when he advised his readers ‘to make your meal out of a single dish’ when in Spain. It’s better to order a few tapas, or small plates, because then there’s more chance of getting something you like. And the best options in Spain are cured meats like jamón ibérico and fried fish dishes. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed when I ordered those. 

Maugham made the rather wild claim that ‘you eat much better in the north of a country than in the south’. Still, in the case of Spain, it may be true, although I have limited experience of the north. The finest meal by far that I have eaten there was in a place called Casa Zanito in the beautiful walled town of Olite in Navarra. As a general rule, though, it has to be rubbish, as anyone who has travelled in Scotland could tell you. Just try finding a decent meal in the Highlands.