Las Ramblas 2: Tapas Crawl

I love tapas and I've always been dreaming on doing a tapas crawl in Spain. Now that the occasion presented itself, I wasn't going to say no. We did the crawl. At least tried to. A tapas crawl is when you go from one place to another sampling what their specialty is. However, we could only manage to stop at two restaurants in Barcelona and 3 places in Madrid. On one night, all we could do was order a variety of tapas in one place and just stayed there. I don't know if that would be considered a tapas crawl, but for the sake of this post, it is a tapas crawl.
Specials are posted so it's easy to see if you want anything. This one for instance offers tapas, paella, and drink for E7,95 not bad at all.
Yummmmmmmm!
The very best gambas I have tasted. It's simply grilled shrimps seasoned with salt and pepper and sprinkled with olive oil and sitting on a mound of potato wedges. I have never had very fresh shrimp as these before. I can still taste it.
They have pricey plates like the combination seafood platter, but boy oh boy, it's worth the price. This plate was something like 28 euros.
Common tapas fare: potato in aioli, meatballs, pulpo, and shrimp salad.
The famous paella. While I am a rice eater, I'm more impressed by the paellas I have tasted in the Napa Valley. I want my paella a little drier than this :). It's very good though.
No reason to omit dessert when doing a tapas crawl. Here we each ordered Crema de Catalunya, a custard-like dessert with brulee topping. Very good and tasty. My husband was able to recreate this dessert and we served this over Christmas and last Saturday when we had friends over.
There's beer . It's San Miguel Beer. Now I don't know if this one's Spanish or this is the one from the Philippines. A little thing I noticed in Barcelona is that they never serve you water. If you want water they will bring you bottled water and charge you for it. So we either had beer, wine, or even coffee for dinner.
One restaurant offered sangria in their combination meal.
More beer. Who says no to beer?
The length of Las Ramblas is dotted with outdoor seating like this from restaurants across the road. Burger King is empty, as it should.

Another observation I had is that people eat slowly, taking their sweet time, staying in their seats long after they were finished with their meal, then order coffee or another glass of wine. Everyone is relaxed, even the waiter on a restaurant we went to was busy texting and fiddling with his phone/gadget and in no hurry to attend to customers, and no body was in a hurry to eat anyway.

I thought we offended one restaurant when we were in a hurry to leave immediately the minute we downed our drinks. The waitress asked us if there was something wrong with their food and why are we leaving so soon (we were there nearly an hour and had four tapas, a plate and two drinks). It must have looked strange to them that we didn't stay longer and sipped some coffee. We reasoned out that we needed to sample the neighboring restaurants offerings :)

Comments

  1. Great post. I love your shots...very colorful and they really give the viewer a perfect idea of what the food looked like, which is delicious! I can almost smell it all. The beer looks tempting; I never say "no" to a beer either, except during the month of January (can't wait for February!) Cute hubby, too!

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  2. There's some good looking food there!

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  3. Lovely pictures and very good narration, attention to details was perfect. Is that smart guy behind the beer is ur hubby ? :) here is wishing you many more travels and loads of tapas experience :)

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  4. I have just eaten and now you have me worked up again. Oh for a real tapas. Excellent culinary voyage.

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  5. I have just heard my tummy screaming. =) Sobrang nagutom ako!

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  6. Lovely pictures Maria. Everytime I go to Spain I enjoy tapas!

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  7. I LOVE this about Europe and Barcelona and Ramblas, Maria...all of it. That is such a memorable street and the tapas ARE worth it!

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  8. i learned this tapas crawl in discovery travel and living channel. the host was able to savor the tapas in the whole street haha! super full sya after! :P

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  9. You are killing me! I love paella's and shrimps and everything that you showed here is making me a drool.

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  10. tapas crawl! hmm looks fun. the food looks good. i'm sure they taste good too. jeezus, i am drooling right now. tomguts ako lagi dahil sa bago kong diet, hehe.

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  11. What nice sequence of pictures, Maria! Splendid dishes. I like very much rice in all its forms of cooking and of course the paella. The last (excellent) paella I've eaten was in Spain many many years ago! In Italy you can't find it easily :-)

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  12. I love tapas! Fantastic that you could sample them in Spain itself. But these look like full plates rather than tapas to me. No wonder you could only try a few.

    We're opposites when it comes to paella — I like mine like this, all saucy. There use to be one place here that specialized in it but it closed years ago. I guess Filipinos expect their paella to be dry and with tutong to boot.

    Now you've gone and made me hungry!

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  13. this makes me hungry. and thirsty! hahaha! i didn't have the san mig when i went back home but tried 'red horse' :D

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  14. sea food trip and a beer! wow! now im craving for sashimis

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  15. that all looks SOOO appetising :)

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  16. aw aw aw ... those foods make me hungry! yuuuummmmm indeed!

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  17. This tapas crawl is pure indulgence. . .and I'd surely do it if I'm there!

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  18. luv the delicious tapas :) there's a few Spanish joints in town here. Now I'm thinking of going this weekend for some tapas hunting hehe :)

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  19. Oh my, Barcelona becomes all the more appealing through your pictures. And the food....delicious! I mean, they look delicious and how I wish I could taste them!

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