21 September 06
The Best Meal of Our Lives
Or certainly a top candidate: Tim and Carolina’s wedding, at El Convento in Boadilla del Monte.
Part of this is always, inevitably, context. But I think we arrived in Spain at a time when the cuisine, previously safe, predictable, heavy on the pork to an extreme degree, has been experimenting with copious fresh produce, an interested and interesting clientele, and just plain panache.
The wedding menu featured meats, salad, seafood in novel and interesting combinations (smoked duck and asparagus in an intriguing-looking soup, for instance). But we were offered, and accepted, a “real” vegetarian menu. Watermelon gazpacho; saffron-flavored tagliatelle. Shaved cepes with an exquisite sauce. A chocolate-hazelnut mousse drizzled with tiramisu “soup.”
Was it because, at 10 pm, we were starving? Hardly. The appetizers served outside would ordinarily have fed us on an evening, not counting the meat ones. No. Food in Spain is now Interesting.
(For a fulsome and very elaborate account of a different kind of Spanish meal, see Ethan’s Barcelona Extravaganza.)
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What a wonderful menu…
One thing we both loved, though, was the wonderful custom at the restaurants of serving free wine instead of water. We were always so thirsty at the end of the day and, wanting mineral water but finding it too expensive, we settled for red wine instead… and promptly returned drunk to our hotel room every night!