El Glop

Remember the Chevy Nova? Peggi had an orange one when I first met her. We drove it all the way to the bottom of Mexico. Terrible name for a car in a Spanish speaking country. “No go!” “El Glop” is not the best name for attracting English speaking people to your restaurant and maybe that was the whole idea. We had coffee there and some tortilla and then returned for dinner. The place was fantastic.

We’ve been savoring our Barcelona hangover, pouring over photos, having our big meal early like they do in Spain, getting up late and buying Spanish products at Wegmans like Manchego and Valdeon cheese, caramelized pecans and chocolate covered figs. We’re almost as bad as the kid in “Breaking Away” who thought he was Italian. Peggi’s reading the Spanish version of Architectural Digest that we bought at the airport as I write this. A good snowstorm would snap us out of this but I don’t think this winter has it in it.

Last night we made fish with a mushroom and fig sauce, something we had twice in Barcelona, once with cod and once with hake. And the other night we made a batch of Espinacas con Garbanzos, something we went looking for in Spain because we’d fallen in love with it. Spinach, chick peas, paprika, saffron and cumin, it almost tastes Indian or maybe Moroccan. We found a recipe online.

Our iPad has become an essential kitchen appliance. I loved Thomas Friedman’s column the other day on how a tablet at the table in restaurants will allow you to put your order through to the kitchen, list ingredients with photos, tally your calories and pay your bill without a waiter. He left out the part about how your food gets to the table but it will take a big bite out of the service industry which has become the backbone of our economy. Our friend, Kevin Vicalvi, used to say, “In the future we’ll all be delivering pizzas to one another” but that was a long time ago.

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