Seville and Food

For the first few days the food we came across in Seville was unremarkable, except for our yummy tostado con mantiquilla y mermelada we have each morning with our café con leche for breakfast at our favorite little café across from the cathedral. Leea was struggling with eating because she is vegetarian and Andalucia (Southern Spain) is a meat and fish eating area. We rarely find a restaurant with Spanish food that has any dishes on the menu that do not have meat or fish in them. In Madrid there were vegetarian choices. In Fuengirola we ate at Italian, Thai and Greek restaurants or cooked at home. But Seville is a challenge. I eat meat, chicken, fish and other critters and I was not even impressed with the food we were eating, hence no gastronomical epiphanies

All of this changed when we discovered a small restaurant right on our doorstep. We believe now that they could cook dog poop and it would taste good. We stopped there for dinner one night because we were tired and it was close to home. I had gazpacho, Leea had a creamy lobster soup and we split an ensalada mixta. Oh yum! The gazpacho was perfectly flavored and spiced. They brought little bowls of tiny croutons, chopped green peppers, cucumbers, and onions and asked what you would like to add. Well a little bit of everything is the only possible answer to that question. While eating, the waiter brought paella to another table and it smelled heavenly. We returned the following night and we had the best paella mixta I’ve ever eaten. Today we stopped in for some tapas on our way to the Flamenco museum. We had a tortilla española which was flavorful, light and moist. I ordered a half ración of dorado (some kind of fish) frita. I had no idea what it was, but it turned out to be small pieces of some white fish like a sea bass fried in a breaded shell. I was about to ask for some lemon or mayonnaise until I bit into one and realized that it had and exquisite lemon juice baked into the fish inside the breading. The fish was moist and soft and the breading was as light as a down feather. Tonight is our last night here and we are planning to have a lobster and rice dish. Leea leaves all the fish and meat in these dishes for me to eat and just enjoys the rice and vegetables.

We found out this restaurant and its hotel, The Hosteria del Laurel, are famous because this is where Zorilla was inspired to create his Don Juan character. At night university students often stay here and cloaked in black capes, they serenade the streets until dawn to raise funds for school, just as they've done for centuries. We were lucky enough to witness this one night at dinner. They tell me it doesn't get any more Spanish than that.

Dinner on our last night in Seville was both delicious and entertaining. We ordered a lobster and rice dish. I should have paused when the waiter said something that sounded like a warning and included some form of the verb encerrar which means to encase. Then the steel instruments that looked more appropriate for surgery than dining were set on the table. Slowly it dawned on us that we were going to have to extract the lobster from its shell. Now I know you are thinking Maine lobster and that’s no big deal, but what were served to us were the small lobsters called langostinos in a very wet if not soupy rice dish.

Leea of course took the high road and asked me to do the extraction because she is vegetarian. This, by the way, didn’t keep her from eating the little critters. So what ensued was pure comedy with sauce flying everywhere. I waded in like a demented and spastic Julia Childs. Leea flinched every time I moved for fear of being whacked with a flying leg or shell, visions of shells whirling in movie scene slow motion across the patio and smacking some other diner, and other nightmares. By the end of dinner we were both in stitches and the staff got a giggle out of it too. We decided the only thing keeping the scene from being totally barbarian was the lack of a club. The dinner however was delicious. I’m still laughing. So I think I have returned to my old habit of ordering meals I don’t understand and being surprised.

This morning before we left Seville we had a demur breakfast on the patio of café con leche, croissant and yogurt.