The food in Spain, simply divine.

Ok so its beginning to feel a like it was a months ago I was in Spain but I still remember very well the plethora of food and wine we enjoyed there and I would be re-missed if I didn't talk about it. Its not secret to anyone that's read my blog before I love food, especially new and different foods so a chance to dig into some classic tapas and traditional paella was met with great glee.

Firstly though lets talk Breakfast, as it comes first and as we all know is the most important meal of the day. Now our hotel Barcelona charged around €15 each for a continental buffet breakfast, and this seems pretty common with very few hotels in Barcelona including Breakfast. We thought this was crazy overpriced and unnecessary so every morning we went for a walk around the streets and stopped at one of the dozens of little cafes. These places were always spot on, usually many locals would be there eating and the owner wouldn't speak English, which in my opinion are two things to look for on holiday for classic simple food. At these places we would just have a baguette of some kind of ham and/or cheese and a hot drink. In traditional Catalan style there was always a very thin layer of tomato juice/sauce (not ketchup) on the bread which was something I really liked. Typically this kind of breakfast for two would be around €10. Its cheap, its authentic, its convenient, gets you out of the hotel easier and all round is just so much better than the over priced hotel breakfasts.

On our first full day we walked around the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, there was some clearly very touristy places and some much more local restaurants. The one we ended up in was called "Mi Burrito y Yo" (my donkey and I) and was somewhere in between. Here I had my first proper authentic Paella, of course Ive had them in England several times but never in Spain and it was instantly obvious how much better this was than the average. It takes quite a while to prepare as its cooked to order and comes in two people portions served in large pan. It really really was immense and given Marianne doesn't like a lot of seafood I felt obligated to devour most it myself which I did with great joy.

We had tapas at several different places in Spain and I soon realised that I had misunderstood it as a general concept. I was under the impression that restaurants would offer huge collections of new and adventures combinations, each more imaginative than the last. However I quickly discovered this was not the case and actually pretty much everywhere offered the same 6-10 dishes. There were slight twists in places but most of the time it was just really good, fresh simple food and despite my initial disappointment, I loved it. Quality of course varied a lot but for the most part many places were very similar. There was one restaurant however which stood out a mile. Id read about it online and heard it always had massive queues because it was so fantastic so one lunchtime we thought we would give it a try. It was very busy and hectic but after only about 15 minutes we were seated and it was clear as day why this place was so popular. I will have to find the name somewhere so I can plug it but right now I cant remember Im afraid. It had a fantastic varied menu and all the food was very high quality. Interestingly the Spanish people that I saw in there typically stuck to the classics where the tourists were going for the variety.

 Very simple tapas selection. Chorizo in wine and garlic mushrooms. Back right is just bread with the thin layer of Tomato as explained, and of course a nice chunk of Spanish Omelette

 PAELLA, looks a mess with lots going on but it was exceptional

Typically Manchego is the cheese eaten 95% of the time and I love it dearly. But here is a fancy goats cheese with peppers from the best of the restaurants we visited.

Sadly the post got a little long to discuss drinks too, but here is the receipt from two mojitos we had one evening, the extra extra sexy was in fact watermelon, and not that great.