Pig’s Ears, Cheap Beers and Calamari

Our two weeks on the Iberian peninsula and our one week in the Balearic isles were not nearly enough time to really soak in all that was on offer, but what we did experience was not at all what we were expecting in both good ways and not so good. Here I’d like to talk about all things edible and drinkable. 

I remember before leaving Australia, one of the things I was very eager to experience in Spain was the food. I couldn’t wait to get my grubby mitts on cured meats, cheeses, paella and olives. My severe lack of understanding of what Spanish cuisine truly had to offer made me exceptionally excited to fill in the gaps of my knowledge and truly uncover authentic Spanish food. I can now confidently report that on top of cured meats, cheeses, paella and olives, there’s bugger all! 😀 In all fairness, the few standard menu items we came across were done very well, mostly. 

Iberian jamón (ham) was absolutely incredible. The pure black Iberian pigs free range on a diet mostly consisting of acorns until they are slaughtered, then their hind legs are buried in salt for two weeks, then rinsed and left to air dry for another four to six. They are then moved to a different curing environment to finish curing over 12 to 48 months, resulting in salty, smooth and rich ham, oily from the fat that has dissolved through the meat over the aging process. While I didn’t try any of the 100% pure black label stuff, the cheaper ham we were eating on nearly a daily basis was exceptionally delicious. I’d hate to know how much money we spent on ham over three weeks but if I ever found out, I’m sure I’d justify it by the sheer joy it brought me. 

One of the more disappointing aspects of the eating experience we had in Spain was tapas. While we did have a good few dishes with our drinks, including fried chorizo, fried anchovies, sauteed pigs ears and spanish tortilla, these were in no way free, which numerous YouTube videos and blog posts had me believe, but came at a rather hefty price on top of the price of our drinks.

This leads me to another point, food in this country is expensive. We did find out at the end of our time in Spain that there is a slightly more efficient way to eat on the cheap, by looking for more local spots that advertise a ‘menú del día’, where two courses, desert and a drink are offered up with a (un)healthy amount of bread for €11-€16 ($17-$27AUD). The idea is to have a bigger lunch so that come dinner time you’re only really after a small plate or two over a few drinks. While this sounds great, there are some of us that struggle to not eat whatever is placed in front of us like an Iberian black pig chomping down acorns as if he’s about to be led to the slaughterhouse. 

We did go to one good tapas place in Madrid called ‘Taberna La Concha’, which specialises in Vermút, a spiced up, fortified wine which I think originated in Italy. Here at the Tav, they fill a martini glass with ice, spritz it with gin, top it up with their house vermút and finish it with a dash of campari, and it probably makes for the best drink I’ve ever had in my life. So good, in fact, that it surpasses my old favourite, the sophisticated man’s drink, the Jägerbomb.

There are some very very cheap places to eat in Spain, like the taco joint we found in Barcelona dishing up €1.25 ($2AUD) tacos, but you don’t go to Spain for the tacos, do you? No. You go so you can spend €28 ($46) EACH on a frying pan of rice with a couple sad looking prawns on top – that’s paella for ya! I can’t even begin to explain how disappointed I was with the Paella in the dish’s home city of Valencia. Of course there are probably way nicer restaurants with way nicer paella than the one we finally stumbled upon after walking around in circles for 8kms, but this was next level disappointing.

Now it’s not all bad, there was one place where the food actually exceeded my expectations, and so it should, it was friggen expensive. The restaurant at Mas de Torrent was other-worldly. We had lunch when we arrived here which was something crazy like 9 dishes each, a few of my favourites being watermelon gazpacho with prawns, oyster mushroom with roasted fig oil and the cod with spinach, plums and aioli. Everything was paired with delicious local wines and it was a great welcoming to our wedding accommodation where we’d spend the next two days. The dinner we had there on our wedding night was the real deal. Being a Michelin star restaurant, I was expecting super small portions and very over the top presentation. This place had a healthy balance of sizeable dishes that looked almost as incredible as they tasted. Highlights included potato ravioli with black pudding and local white beans, the macaroni, pork ribs, baby squid and sundried tomato, and the ‘Xiuxo’ filled with vanilla cream and coffee ice cream. Again, these were all paired with delicious wines, but the star of the show was the desert wine. I loved this desert wine so much I felt the need to turn around to our waiter, Galder, and let him know in very broken, half drunk Spanish that “this wine is the best I’ve ever had”, to his deadpan reply, “I know.” I then topped off the night with two very expensive, very delicious espresso martini type cocktails, one of which was hand delivered to our room a few hundred meters away by my new friend Galder, what a legend. 

We made the most of our buffet breakfast at Mas de Torrent by helping ourselves to essentially what was a five course meal of meats and cheeses, fruits, yoghurt, a full english breakfast, and a variety of sickeningly sweet pastries and baked goods. I paid for it in advance, I was not leaving that dining area until the thought of another glazed donut made my teeth hurt and my stomach begin to burst. 

Michelin star restaurants aside, the best things we ate in all our time in Spain were probably the lunches and dinners I made in an attempt to save money. This was also the best way for me to really work on my Spanish by asking for fresh produce at markets, which was nerve racking at first but really left me feeling accomplished once I’d secured my bread rolls for our ‘bocadillos’ (sandwiches) or my ‘bife de chorizo’ (sirloin steaks) for our barbies of a night. The whole experience of walking around a market and asking the vendors for various bits and pieces, after explaining to them that I’m learning Spanish, was so much fun and left me feeling like my 800+ day streak on Duolingo wasn’t entirely for nothing. Everyone was super helpful and all smiles, each time it was quite a wholesome experience and definitely one of my favourite parts of the whole trip.

I will say one thing that Spain has going for it, cheap beer. There are definitely places you can get very, very expensive beers – anywhere with a view or in a plaza (square) will easily cost you three or four times as much as the dingy joints on side streets. But if you really want a cheap cerveza, every single grocery store has fridges with loose 500ml cans for like €1.25 ($2AUD). Therefore, the most cost effective way to eat and drink in this country is to buy everything in a grocery store, go back to the confines of your accommodation to prepare and consume it, then turn the lights off and go to bed, because as soon as you walk out that door you’re not coming back until you’ve lost yourself 80 odd euro ($130AUD).

We went to a very famous Churro place in Madrid and ate several quite underwhelming churros and drank two absolutely appalling coffees, but there was one… dish… that I was very intrigued by in my Spanish food research, the Bocadillo de Calamares (calamari sandwich). A classic Madrid staple. Why on earth Madrid, a city in the middle of a desert, is home to the calamari sandwich is anyone’s guess, but I thought that in order for it to gain its status as a necessary indulgence in one’s time in the city, it must be downright fantastic. Our first three day stint in Madrid left me deprived of the local delicacy, so I had to wait another few weeks until we came back, and let me tell you, not a day went by where I didn’t long for its deep fried embrace. On our very last day in the country, I eventually got my hands on one (two) of the elusive calamari sandwiches, which is literally just a lot of calamari rings in a bread roll. Now this may come as a surprise to some people, it certainly surprised me, it tastes exactly like a lot of calamari rings in a bread roll. A tiny baby squeeze of lemon juice or a PINCH OF SALT would work wonders for this exceptionally bland and beige Madrileño staple. I am still happy I tried it (both of them) because if I hadn’t, I probably would eventually spend a lot of money on a return ticket to Madrid just to try one (many).

So there it is, come to Spain for the Jamón, stay for the cheap ass beer, and try a calamari sandwich because the idea that it’s a famous sandwich is so insane that you’ll be left wondering why on earth it even exists, and you’ll want to confirm that it literally is as dumb as it sounds.