UK 12. Nick's Food Tour of Spain

SAN SEBASTIAN. Friday 6th February

Postcards in San Sebastián showed the town covered in snow. February 6th showed the town bathed in sunshine and enjoying 24°C. Even at midnight it was still warm enough for a short sleeved shirt. Yep, the only logical explanation is that I'm a weather god.

After an hour in Spain I felt completely fluent in French. Sure, I only seem to speak that language every six years or so, but 2 days in Paris brought it all back. I know what to say in all manner of typical commercial and social situations (je voudrais...; ça fait combien?; Oh, bordelle de merde! Vous gros conasse!) but unfortunately none of this is much use in Spain.

But Day 1 passed easily. I met a Spanish speaking Aussie and his English girlfriend (fiancée? wife?) and we hung out for the day and evening and they dealt with the translating. Perfect. They also introduced me to the wonderful art of tapas hopping.

It's pretty simple, really. You start at a tapas bar, get drinks and a plate and take whatever you want from the bar to eat. Anchovy, jamon, creamed fish, artichokes... Then, and here's the good bit, you tell the barman how many pintxos you've had, pay up, go to a few doors down to the next tapas bar and repeat. The Parte Vieja (old part) of San Sebastián is loaded with such places so you can easily spend several hours working your way through a meal. My favourite was baby eel pie.

Tapas bars in other countries don't compare. There you sit down and order and a plate arrives and someone misses out on something because the number of servings never matches the number of people at your table. Here, it's all laid out on the bar, happily going off, with people happily smoking around the food and happily dropping their scraps and napkins and cigarette butts on the floor. You pick what you like the look of and it's fine. If there's something no-one likes there're not three left on the plate for you and your mates to pay for. What a great way to dine.

Apart from tapas, San Sebastián is a beautiful city with a crescent-shaped bay, beautiful beaches and two headlands overlooking the town. There's a castle (remains thereof) on one, with a not-quite-as-good-as-Rio statue of Christ making his presence felt. The views are spectacular, the walk up suitable tiring and in summer it's probably the best place in town for cool air and sea breezes.

This is one nice town. I recommend it. (Especially in unseasonably warm winters. You know, if I'm not a weather god, then this weather is probably due to global warming, something which, as an environmental designer, I'm dedicating my life to fixing up. But really, it's so damned pleasant to be enjoying the sun in February. Maybe I should get back into the oil business.)

PAMPLONA. Saturday 7th February

Seeing this country is fast becoming an exercise in culinary indulgence. I was lucky in San Sebastián to meet Michael and Rachel for tapas hopping. 2 hours for lunch and around the same for dinner. Then this morning's cold and wet weather caused me to change plans on the fly - I postponed Bilbao and headed straight to Pamplona. Just in time for lunch.

We (me and Spanish cousins) started around 3:00 with asparagus with capsicum and garlic; acorn-fed jamon (which is so far superior to "regular" ham it's as if it's from a different beast. Technically it is - it's from a black boar that only eats acorns - but even the normal jamon is far removed from the pink flabby stuff I'm used to); artichokes with clams; and marinated capsicum. This was pretty damned filling but there was still mains to come: monk fish in olive oil and garlic for Richard and me (and there's only been one better fish in my life so far - a barbecued fresh-water fish in Kuala Lumpur), steaks a foot and a half across for the girls, and a (perfectly cooked) steak as big as my head for Ana. She didn't leave any, either.

Feeling drowsy from the massive effort of digestion, we then decided to cleanse our palates with dessert. Sheep's yoghurt (basically) for me, which is another local dish; sorbet for the others.

We left around 5:00 and went home to rest up before dinner. I nibbled on some biscuits (local specialty biscuits, not Jatz crackers, or anything) for a while and about 9:30, fearing I might pass out from lack of food, Ana put some sausage and more jamon my way before a celery and walnut dinner (very small) with fruit and yoghurt for afters. Finished that around 11:00 and called it a night.

****

You know, I had been planning to write a food tour of England. (Oh, French tour: Nice duck, but the blueberry sauce was a little overpowering. Ox tongue: tender as can be, beautiful sauce, kinda weird seeing the taste buds.) But frankly, food here doesn't have what it takes. Despite the efforts of celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver, on the evolutionary tree of cuisine, British food is situated on one of the lowest branches. On the most sickly looking twig slightly overhanging the neighbours fence line (and so asking to be pruned) is the chip buttie.

I was out cycling with some mates and we stopped at the World's Worst Pub for lunch. This place actively misled customers as to the menu, then the woman got abusive towards us when we asked where the salad was. It's always been written that way on the board, and as new customers we should have been aware that the salad is not part of the chip buttie order.

Anyway, Mike talked me into ordering this thing, saying they were really good. I received a limp hamburger bun covered in margarine with some below average chips inserted. And that was it! Apparently, at it's best, the chip buttie has better bread and nicer chips and no margarine. Wow.

Thanks, Britain, for your wonderful contribution.