Spanish Fry

I had tapas last night.
Now call me unsophisticated if you like (and that's Mr Unsophisticated to you!), but I'd never had tapas before and, wanna know something? The next time I have it there will no longer be a hole in my arse!

Pither's latest rejection of Britain's entry into Europe followed a day out yesterday in Big City. I had gone with a bunch of pals to celebrate the birthdays of no fewer than four of our number and, before they read this and drum me out of the Fat, Forelorn and Forty-Something Club, I have to say a jolly good time was had by all.

The birthday boys.


The afternoon was spent touring half a dozen or so pubs in and around Big City's Jewellery Quarter, all bar one of which (The Villa Rose, pictured) turned out to be spectacularly unspectacular and served beer to match. Still, it's the company which makes a grand day out and with a dozen mutants with whom to chew the fat it was always going to be better than sitting at home cutting my toenails and watching Curtain Call at Cactus Creek.

Beer drunk, we made our way to an ultra-trendy quarter in the heart of Big City and an ultra-trendy tapas restaurant where we had booked a table for 7pm. You could almost hear the Egon Ronay stars falling off the outside of the building as we shambled inside. I think if they'd known what to expect the staff would have put straw down and laid on a couple of troughs for us!
Anyway, we declined the offer of complimentary goatee beards (to match those worn by seemingly all the beautiful young things already in the restaurant) and took our tubular
steel and sculpted softwood seats to await the comida. To save faffing around, we each ordered a set offering-for-one and as the dishes began to appear so did my knowledge of Spanish.

Firstly, I was led to believe that "tapa" literally meant "lid". Well, that's not true. Tapas more accurately translates as either "fuck all!" or "twiglets". Ok, ok, ok, I know tapas are traditionally appetisers but if that's the case then who in the holy name of fuck decided that it would be a good idea to make them into an entire cuisine? I mean, if Johnny Spaniard came over here and was given a meal consisting of one hundredth of a bowl of soup, followed by a twenty seventh of a prawn cocktail, followed by one millionth of a melon with one thousandth of a spoonful of pate to finish I think he'd be demanding his pesetas back quicker than he could say "We're not all Fascists any more, honest!"

I am a 16-stone bloke. I had entered the restaurant having consumed just one cheese cob and my entire bodyweight in beer since 7am. Under normal circumstances, had a middle-aged cow been tethered to my table at that stage of the evening I would have had my fork into it and been down to the hooves before the waiter had brought the wine list! Imagine my slight disappointment then when "a fillet of anchove" was slid in front of me. Not a shoal of anchove, you notice. Not even A WHOLE fucking anchove, oh dear me no. No, a fucking FILLET OF ANCHOVE!!!!. Who the fuck had they got working in the kitchen? A microsurgeon? How the buggery bollocks do you fillet an anchove? The fucking thing is only two angstroms thick to start with!! I was shitting it each time someone came in the restaurant because the inrush of air could have blown it off the plate and seen it dissipate in the atmosphere!

One thing I did know, however, was how my anchove had died - it had been drowned in olive oil!! Death by olive oil seemed to be a recurrant theme in tapas cuisine, as it turned out. Next up were a couple of asparagus. Not ordinary aspaparaus, mind you. No, "white" asparagus. Do you know the difference between normal asparagus and white asparagus? Yup, one's green, one's white, one's not poncey, the other is. Apart from that, they taste exactly the fucking same.

Anyway, after two courses and with 0.0043 grammes of food inside me with a slightly lower nutrific value than the table at which I was sitting, I was seriously beginning to worry that I might not make it through alive. I think even Karen Carpenter would have been getting peckish by that stage! Admittedly, we were getting peppered with olives which kept coming from the kitchen like buckshot from a blunderbuss but trying to stay alive on something you normally just fish out of a vodka martini is no easy task.

Joy of joys then when I was told that the exotic sounding "patatas bravas" were on their way. Sadly, the translation turned out to be "chips the size and shape of dice in ketchup". To save time, let me give you some other translations gleaned on the night:

Sardinas al ajillo - anorexic sardine poisoned with lemon and garlic.

Embutiidos - Spanish cured meats the size of a watch face and cut so thin you can see the name of who made your plate through them.

Primientos rojos con anchoas - three slices of red pepper softened to the consistency of snot....with another fucking anchove.

Almendras - half a handful of fucking nuts.

Gambas al ajiilo - a prawn the size of a hamster's penis which, when de-shelled, is the size of a premature baby hamster's penis.

That, I think, was about it. There were a worrying few moments at the end of the meal when the waiters came out en-masse to our table. I seriously thought that they were going to demand that we build a railway but they only wanted to make sure we paid up and didn't do a runner. Chance would have been a fine thing. We barely had the energy to stand, let alone run!

So, in a nutshell (as, indeed, the entire meal could have fitted), I am not a big fan of tapas. As the Spanish equivalent of twiglets they are fine - something to nibble on while you're having a beer. As a meal for any creature which is larger than a gerbil and is not chained to a radiator in Baghdad, they are inadequate.
Tapas can go to Grantham.