n.d.p. in barcelona: tapas 24

Earlier that evening, the wine director of renowned Barcelona wine fortress Monvínic, Isabelle Brunet, told me something that surprised me, although in retrospect it should have been obvious: Barcelona is a beer town. Brunet said that the average resident of Barcelona consumed just 20 litres of wine per year, but 70 litres of beer. By contrast, in Paris the average resident consumed 90 litres of wine per year. (Statistics for Paris beer consumption were not mentioned, perhaps due to present lack of any real beer culture whatsoever in that city.)

That this surprised me is perhaps very American, and very east coast at that. When one does not come from wine country, one imagines that historical wine-producing nations must exist in a kind of perpetual bacchanal, celebrating the national bounty at all hours in various states of undress. But in Barcelona you have a warm climate and a beach and an astronomically successful football club, the second richest in the world: these things, as sure as hops plus water, are a recipe for beer.

I had my own reasons for downing a few cold ones over the frantic meal R and I had afterwards at  Tapas 24 , chef-restaurateur Carlos Abellan's subterranean tapas bar. I didn't know many producers on the list, and it seemed pointless and sort of cruel to start interrogating the harried chef / servers careening about behind the bar. Also, the list was written in a format that has always irritated me, segregated by neat price bracket, as though one were choosing phone cards. But the real decider, as ever, was the cuisine. Tapas, Spain's national food group, and its most successful export since the Macarena. Every magazine article ever written on Spain, even those pertaining to unrelated subjects such as the economic crisis, will cheerfully explain the origin of the word tapas, how it means 'lid', etc. To the world at large tapas sensibly means one thing, which is hangover cuisine, whether one is recovering-from or heading-straight-for.

n.d.p. in burgundy: le bar à vins, gevrey-chambertin

I like towns small enough for things not to have names. The Post Office, the train station, the wine bar. Probably not great for your Google Search results, but without any local competition, who cares?

When we settled upon lunch at Le Bar à Vins, my friend J and I were still greyfaced and wasted from the previous night at Beaune's Bar du Square, our condition compounded somewhat by the two tastings of magnificent tightly-allocated wines we'd already endured enjoyed that morning. When traveling in wine towns I usually feel pressure to Make Every Meal Count, but at that point we both felt it would be a success merely to hold food down. Additionally we'd remarked that Le Bar à Vins was pouring Thomas Pico's (Domaine Pattes Loup) soaringly great Chablis by the glass. What was such a wonderful not-quite-local wine doing at a nameless bar à vins? Could it be indicative of a greater culinary sophistication than we would have otherwise supposed, given the bar's general pokiness and grandmotherly décor?

n.d.p. in madrid: hangover cuisine at almendro 13

Posting about this place not because it was particularly spectacular by any measure, but rather because I found it illustrative of the general joyous brutality of the whole tapas concept.

You walk in and fight - almost literally fight - your way to a table still cluttered and smeared with the greasy debris of its last occupants, where you wedge yourself in and immediately employ coats, scarves, and handbags as vital seat-holders for whichever poor souls among your party are kind or credulous enough to volunteer to fetch food and drinks, neither of which can be ordered from the table you just fought for. You must leave your seat and visit either the bar (either floor) or the kitchen (ground floor only), which venture risks inviting invasion by hawk-eyed seat-stealing Spanish women with lip-rings.