Breakfast in Spain / Desayuno en Espana
Maybe we just didn’t know enough. Maybe our expectations were too high? The fact is that, except for some very specific things, food in Spain proved rather a disappointment…
It may appear exotic or colourful to Northern tourists, used to the bland fare of their countries, but for someone coming from the Aegean region it can be described as mediocre at best.
So it was with breakfast: It is indeed difficult, after living for so many years with the world’s arguably richest and most varied breakfast culture in Turkey, to really find any better breakfast, but what we encountered in Spain was especially underwhelming.
One could of course argue that there is at least a culture of “desayuno”, as opposed to Italy or Greece for example. And it is true, that at least in the bigger cities, one can almost always find at least a bakery or pastry shop that also offers coffee or tea and thus have a kind of nearly acceptable breakfast. After all Spain does cater to its tourists.
Where the truth becomes obvious though, is when you find youself in some small village, out of the beaten path. The normal fare one can expect in the bars in these places is “tostada”, that is half a bread loaf, sliced in two and toasted. You can have both pieces (“tostada entera”, i.e. whole) or just one of them (“tostada media”, i.e. half).
Typical Spanish bar / café where one can have breakfast.
The most common thing to spread on your tostada is extra virgin olive oil, which in Spain is excellent and can be found on every single restaurant / bar table by default and tomato pulp. The latter ranges from freshly pulped tomatoes, that can have a very good taste, to an almost urecognisable stuff coming out of a plastic tube.
Tostada!
When both the tomato and the oil are good, then the tostada can be quite nice. When you have no other alternative for five weeks on end, well, then you start missing some real breakfast!
Of course you can have your tostada with the default jamon iberico as well. Try asking for a tostada with cheese though and it will come with jamon and cheese. Somehow just cheese doesn’t seem to be an option, they cannot even understand why you would want something like this. Now jamon and all kinds of “embutidos” in Spain are really excellent, as long of course as you don’t have to have them as the only option every single day!
Bar at five in the morning. If you cannot find anything else, try going near a hospital – there is bound to be a bar or canteen open!
Yes, food is very important to us and we always want to try new and strange things on the road, it is just that we had this conception and expectation of a rich mediterranenaen food culture and when we did not encounter it we felt that it somehow detracted from the whole journey experience. Then of course we remembered that we shouldn’t be really complaining, after all we have been to places like Cambodia and Kyrgyzstan – try finding breakfast or any kind of nice food for that matter there!
And then there were “churros” of course – that will be the next subject!
