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Thinking of getting paella, just to say that we did, for our last dinner in Madrid, we asked the concierge downstairs to recommend good restaurants close by. Of course, he recommended the one in the hotel as being close by and pretty good, and then, one called La Finca de Susana, on the next block.
We went to La Finca; its menu showed surprisingly adequate prices --- nothing above 10 euros. If we assume that the prices in Spain are just like Canada, only in euros, food is amazingly cheap; for a restaurant of that class and style in Toronto or Ottawa, I would have assumed a menu ranging from $9.95 to $35.95 or so (which proves that I've spent too long in Toronto with a meal allowance and a thirst for various ways to spend it, which is another story.)
There wasn't a paella on the menu. After looking for a while, my brother settled on duck with plums and couscous, and I picked "Costillas en estilo de Finca". We had water, which is, like it seems to be in Europe, mineral water and to be paid for; I have not yet learned the Spanish for 'tap water, please.' Oh well.
That was the fastest service I've ever had in a sit-down restaurant, bar none. Seriously, she takes our orders; another waitress brings us water and bread a minute later. I look at the bread and just decide to visit the restroom while we wait --- when out come our meals. Three minutes, it may have been. I can't understand it; maybe one of us lucked out on a surplus meal just being there, but two?
The costillas turned out to be ribs, and they were very, very nice, although I had forgotten how complicated it is to eat ribs with a fork and table knife. I had been taught, as a guide to table manners in Russia at least, that 'bird and fish and fair maiden you can take with your bare hands'; ribs do not fall into that category, and North American table manners are even more restrictive. The meat was very tender, though, and it was very nice, but, eating carefully, I was eating long after my brother finished and even after the waitress had brought him the dessert menu.
At this time, a family of three, father, mother and teenage daughter, came to the table next to ours. Even though we were only a few inches from them, due to the acoustics of the restaurant, it was hard to figure out what they were saying, or even in what language. Finally, it clicked to me.
"Italian," I tell my brother. "They're speaking Italian."
"Not Romanian?"
"No. I've heard Romanian spoken a few times, and it is really odd how it sounds like both Slavic and Romance at the same time. This is Italian, I could tell by her vowels and intonation contours."
A few minutes later, he asks me, "Did you know it by the book on the table?"
"No, I knew it by the vowels." I look, and there is indeed a book called "Guido di Madrid," or something like that, very obviously in Italian. But I am a proud linguist, and even if I don't speak Italian (I just sing in it) I can tell its vowel and intonation structure, darnit.
Dessert was another array of things that we could not understand, particularly the 'postre de Timbaon' and the 'postre de Zimbaonga" (I think.) I picked tiramisu, because tiramisu is one of the joys of my life. My brother asks the waitress which one of the two exotically named desserts has more chocolate (he doesn't care for chocolate, actually). She replies that they're both the same.
"I wonder if she is an algebraist," I joked, "and can honestly reply that they both have the same amount of chocolate if neither of them has any." I said that after she left, my brother having ordered the Timbaon.
The desserts were slower than the mains, about average for a restaurant. I had been expecting a cup containing my tiramisu, but it came as a slice of layer cake dusted with cocoa. It was lovely, although I almost choked on the cocoa dust once. My brother's Timbaon dessert turned our to be a coffee ice cream covered in custard. Unfortunately, the restaurants here also practice the strange habit of drenching dessert plates in chocolate sauce and adding a dollop of whipped cream. That practice bewilders me; I've never found any earthly use for the whipped cream*, and generally ask them to skip it if I order cake in familiar surroundings.
*get mind out of gutter, it's in a public restaurant that I'm talking about!
So our desserts turned out, except for the chocolate sauce my brother resented, and the whipped cream which I avoided, very nice. The tiramisu could be a little lighter, but was delicious.
However, the speedy service vanished when it came time for us to decline coffee and request the bill. For some reason, when I was doing that, the appropriate phrase in German, "wir vielen bitte bezahlen", popped into my head. I'm used to French and Spanish sharing a place in my skull; they've been doing that since I was eight and it has actually gotten better in recent years; but German, I thought you get a compartment to yourself until I decide to take up Dutch or Swedish.
We waited a fair long time for that bill; my brother even debated not giving them a tip at all. I vetoed that idea, as I believe in tipping; the important part of the meal came like a whirlwind and the entire meal was very good indeed; and I could see the restaurant was getting busy and the staff were looking frazzled. Wir vielen bitte bezahlen, though. I asked for the bill another time, and this time it was indeed brought to us. I tipped appropriately, and so we left with a last dinner on Spanish soil having been very pleasant.
We went to La Finca; its menu showed surprisingly adequate prices --- nothing above 10 euros. If we assume that the prices in Spain are just like Canada, only in euros, food is amazingly cheap; for a restaurant of that class and style in Toronto or Ottawa, I would have assumed a menu ranging from $9.95 to $35.95 or so (which proves that I've spent too long in Toronto with a meal allowance and a thirst for various ways to spend it, which is another story.)
There wasn't a paella on the menu. After looking for a while, my brother settled on duck with plums and couscous, and I picked "Costillas en estilo de Finca". We had water, which is, like it seems to be in Europe, mineral water and to be paid for; I have not yet learned the Spanish for 'tap water, please.' Oh well.
That was the fastest service I've ever had in a sit-down restaurant, bar none. Seriously, she takes our orders; another waitress brings us water and bread a minute later. I look at the bread and just decide to visit the restroom while we wait --- when out come our meals. Three minutes, it may have been. I can't understand it; maybe one of us lucked out on a surplus meal just being there, but two?
The costillas turned out to be ribs, and they were very, very nice, although I had forgotten how complicated it is to eat ribs with a fork and table knife. I had been taught, as a guide to table manners in Russia at least, that 'bird and fish and fair maiden you can take with your bare hands'; ribs do not fall into that category, and North American table manners are even more restrictive. The meat was very tender, though, and it was very nice, but, eating carefully, I was eating long after my brother finished and even after the waitress had brought him the dessert menu.
At this time, a family of three, father, mother and teenage daughter, came to the table next to ours. Even though we were only a few inches from them, due to the acoustics of the restaurant, it was hard to figure out what they were saying, or even in what language. Finally, it clicked to me.
"Italian," I tell my brother. "They're speaking Italian."
"Not Romanian?"
"No. I've heard Romanian spoken a few times, and it is really odd how it sounds like both Slavic and Romance at the same time. This is Italian, I could tell by her vowels and intonation contours."
A few minutes later, he asks me, "Did you know it by the book on the table?"
"No, I knew it by the vowels." I look, and there is indeed a book called "Guido di Madrid," or something like that, very obviously in Italian. But I am a proud linguist, and even if I don't speak Italian (I just sing in it) I can tell its vowel and intonation structure, darnit.
Dessert was another array of things that we could not understand, particularly the 'postre de Timbaon' and the 'postre de Zimbaonga" (I think.) I picked tiramisu, because tiramisu is one of the joys of my life. My brother asks the waitress which one of the two exotically named desserts has more chocolate (he doesn't care for chocolate, actually). She replies that they're both the same.
"I wonder if she is an algebraist," I joked, "and can honestly reply that they both have the same amount of chocolate if neither of them has any." I said that after she left, my brother having ordered the Timbaon.
The desserts were slower than the mains, about average for a restaurant. I had been expecting a cup containing my tiramisu, but it came as a slice of layer cake dusted with cocoa. It was lovely, although I almost choked on the cocoa dust once. My brother's Timbaon dessert turned our to be a coffee ice cream covered in custard. Unfortunately, the restaurants here also practice the strange habit of drenching dessert plates in chocolate sauce and adding a dollop of whipped cream. That practice bewilders me; I've never found any earthly use for the whipped cream*, and generally ask them to skip it if I order cake in familiar surroundings.
*get mind out of gutter, it's in a public restaurant that I'm talking about!
So our desserts turned out, except for the chocolate sauce my brother resented, and the whipped cream which I avoided, very nice. The tiramisu could be a little lighter, but was delicious.
However, the speedy service vanished when it came time for us to decline coffee and request the bill. For some reason, when I was doing that, the appropriate phrase in German, "wir vielen bitte bezahlen", popped into my head. I'm used to French and Spanish sharing a place in my skull; they've been doing that since I was eight and it has actually gotten better in recent years; but German, I thought you get a compartment to yourself until I decide to take up Dutch or Swedish.
We waited a fair long time for that bill; my brother even debated not giving them a tip at all. I vetoed that idea, as I believe in tipping; the important part of the meal came like a whirlwind and the entire meal was very good indeed; and I could see the restaurant was getting busy and the staff were looking frazzled. Wir vielen bitte bezahlen, though. I asked for the bill another time, and this time it was indeed brought to us. I tipped appropriately, and so we left with a last dinner on Spanish soil having been very pleasant.
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I drank coffee. With lots of cream for calories. In the most expensive restaurants I'd ever tried. People gave me samples so I could see what I was missing. When they finished their food and their second course arrived - and they were stuffed - people I didn't know would try to feed me. I said OK, of course - and bought them $20 in desserts, making my day cost about $30.
The remainder got spent on things like pelmeni from the Russian quarter, lentils, and grains I couldn't get in Maine. Shipped. In two weeks, I sent enough good staple food-stuffs home to last six months.
Mmm, finest-kind finest-grind flour.
And lentils.
I... love lentils.
Food allowances are dangerous beyond words, especially in the South where people, even if you say, "No, seriously, spend your money on yourself - I'm actually just having coffee on purpose so I can spend the food money on different food here," Feed you within an inch of your life.
It was a very weird experience, and one I'd not care to repeat, since it would be entirely too easy to accidentally lead that culture into feeding one all the time - but it was good fun for the two week stint, and people seemed to think I was being nice by buying high end desserts for the table when everyone was thinking of home and hotel and whatnot.