The One About FOOD 2: Eating Out

Mid-December and today the temperature is 17 degrees! That's considerably warmer than the last month or so, however: there's been a bit of a nip in the air the last three or four weeks, but even so nowhere near a frost. It HAS rained A LOT, though - never heavily but often all day: as we were warned. Still, when it's not raining, we still get beautiful blue skies.

Anyway, back to food....

Eating out is complicated here – much more so than Italy where you basically have a choice between pizza at a pizzeria or a proper meal at a restaurant. Here, there seem to be endless sorts of meal you can have at any number of different types of eating place at various different points of the day – although they all basically serve different combinations of the same dishes in one size or form or another! And the other complication is that there are huge numbers of eating-places to choose from, because eating out is a national obsession. People categorically do not go to each other’s houses to eat or meet. They go out.

We haven’t eaten out a great deal. We’ve been enjoying preparing fresh, local produce and eating it at home, we can’t afford to eat out often (in terms of money and bodyweight), and anyway we’ve got a whole year to sample what’s on offer. However, we have now eaten out enough to begin to get the hang of it.

Putting it very simply, if you want a full meal you can go to a ‘restaurante’ (varieties of which include the ‘asador’ – specialising in meat – or the ‘polleria’ – specialising in chicken – or the ‘marisqueria’ – specialising in fish). Or you might go to the ‘comedor’ (dining room) which is hidden at the back of many ‘tabernas’ (pubs/bars) – often so hidden that you wouldn’t know it was there unless you had lived in the area for years - many of which serve very good traditional food very cheaply.

Another type of restaurant is the cider-house (‘sidreria’ in Spanish, ‘sagardotegea’ in Basque). There aren’t many here in Bilbao: they’re mostly in the San Sebastian area. But we did visit one in a village not far from Bilbao, Fika (one of the villages bombed by Hitler at around the time of the Gernika massacre.) We didn’t have the whole massive ‘sidreria’ meal experience, but we did have some cider, and experienced the traditional way of serving the cider direct from the barrel, with the cider issuing in a long stream reminiscent of urination and expertly caught in several glasses by the bar-person!  The main cider season is January-April, when apples are in season, so we will report more after Christmas.

Another type of restaurant we learnt about after a few weeks here and which the guide books won’t mention at all is the ‘euskaldun batzoki’ which is a traditional restaurant run by the Basque National Party: every neighbourhood has one! This seems to suggest how central food is to Basque culture, but no doubt food is also a way to lead citizens to the ballot box…

If you don’t fancy a full meal, in some restaurants and many tabernas you can have a lighter meal – a kind of bar-snack – in the form of ‘raciones’, which literally means ‘portions’ – a sort of large helping of basic tapas-style things. So you might order ‘raciones’ of ‘patatas fritas’ (chips), ‘patatas bravas’ (spicy tomato and potatoes), ‘pimientos verdes’ (fried green peppers), ‘rabas’ (squid rings (urgh!)), ‘albondigas’ (meat balls), etc.  And if you order several different ones it’s expected that you might all share.

To complicate things further, there is a version of ‘raciones’ called ‘cazuelitas’ (stews) – often served in restaurants or tabernas which specialise in bowls of delicious fish and meat stews, served from steel or earthenware pans. There’s one near us called Rio-Oja, which is a rather wonderful place. You sit at the bar in front of a row of beautiful stews in huge steel pans and eat your delicious stew.

And to complicate things even further, for snacks there is ‘tapas’ – although here in the Basque Country, there is no tapas: rather there is a tapas equivalent (though it’s not really like tapas at all) which is called ‘pintxos’ – of which more in a later post.

If you’re going out for a meal, the most important thing to know is that the best time to eat out is lunchtime, because every restaurant and comedor has a ‘menu del dia’ (menu of the day) which it serves at lunchtime and which is phenomenally good value. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I had:
·      Starter: Lasagne made with fresh tuna
·      Main course: Whole grilled turbot with garlic sautéed potatoes
·      Dessert: a Basque trifle called ‘gosua’
·      Half a bottle of decent red wine
·      Half a bottle of mineral water
·      Plenty of bread
for 20 euros (= £16)! And that was expensive because it was a weekend. It might have been as  little as 12 euros on a weekday.

We’re not quite sure how they can afford to provide all that so cheaply (and it was very good food) – but we think it is because everybody seems to eat out all the time (well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration…) so all the restaurants can pretty much guarantee being full at lunchtimes. And indeed if you go for a walk any day (including weekdays) at about 3pm you will see cafes, restaurants and tabernas bursting at the seams with people having lunch.

And what can you expect to eat? Well, first of all the vast majority of restaurants serve traditional Basque food, or a slightly modern take on it. There are a few Chinese, Japanese, Italian (and even German!) restaurants in Bilbao, but not many.

There are some iconic Basque dishes which are served in almost every restaurant, most of which include fish:

·      Top of the list is ‘bacalao al pil-pil’, which is salted cod served in a thick buttery sauce made with the slightly gelatinous juices taken from the cooking of the fish.

·      Another classic is ‘txipirones en su tinta’ – squid in its own ink (urgh!) – a disturbingly black dish.

·      And another is ‘Kokotxas en salsa verde’ – hake cheeks (!) in a parsley and garlic sauce. 

·      Another is a simple tuna stew called ‘Marmitako’.

And there are plenty of other options, with scrambled eggs (‘huevos revueltos’) of various kinds often an alternative to the meat and fish dishes. It’s sometimes VERY difficult to locate vegetarian options, though – and even when a dish is described as vegetarian, it’s quite likely to have ham in it, which the Spanish seem to treat more like a seasoning than an ingredient. But one good option is ‘minestra’, which is a delicious vegetable stew, a bit like a non-soup version of minestrone in Italy. Even then you’d have to be sure to ask for it ‘sin jamon’ (without ham).

For dessert, the Spanish basically only do desserts made out of some combination of cream and sugar and eggs – all delicious. These include:
·      the aforementioned trifle-like ‘gosua’ – cream, custard, caramel and sponge cake
·      ‘cuajada’ – a sort of creamy curdy thing with caramel
·      ‘natillas’ – custard and cinammon
·      ‘flan’ – crème caramel
·      ‘arroz con leche’ – rice pudding 
·      ‘crema Catalana’ – crème Brulee

A common alternative to creamy puddings is the wonderful ‘nueces, membrillo y idiazabal’ (walnuts, quince paste and sheep’s cheese).

For a light meal, there’s always the option of a ‘boccadillo’  - a sandwich made with baguette style bread (‘pan de barra’) – or a ‘sandwich’, usually made with sliced white bread ‘(pan de molde’). Note that these are generally bought and eaten fresh in cafes and bars, not taken away in pre-packed boxes in shops as in the UK.

Beyond meals, there’s the morning snack (‘merienda’) at 11.30 (between breakfast at 8.30 and lunch at 2.30) when the whole nation apparently eats ‘tortilla’ (Spanish omelette) often popping to the local bar or café for a quick slice and a coffee. Every café and bar has at least two or three different types of tortilla on display – some plain, some with vegetables and/or ham, some double-layered omelette sandwiches with a filling.

Next time - CAKES AND SWEETS!