Tapa-less bars

I love tapas, I love bars, and I love free shit. Whoever came up with the slogan, "there is no free lunch," must not have ever visited Andalusia. In Granada, when you sit down at a bar and order a drink, it is delivered to you with a complimentary tapas dish. A tapa is an ambiguous Spanish term used to describe an appetizer. I say ambiguous because a tapa could be anything; it might be some bread and cheese, it might be a plate of olives, it might be a sandwich, anything. The only thing that is standard with these little culinary delights, is that they improve in stages for every drink you order in succession. Its kind of similar to the degrees of Free Masonry- the more you buy in, the more that will be revealed. One such establishment, La Bella y La Bistea (Beauty and the Beast), is very forthcoming with their tapas, and I frequent this place a lot. For 2 euro ($3.60) you get a cold beer, 2 ham and cheese sandwiches, french fries, and pasta salad. For the second beer, two pork barbeque rolls and tater tots. By the fifth beer you have to turn them away. This is the kind of heaven that Kelsey dreams about.

So when will America wake up to this awesome trend? All of you should feel deceived because a tapas bar is not a place for bachelorette parties, or somewhere for women to dress up, share drinks, and gossip over some spinach and artichoke dip or spring rolls. Meritage and Cazbah are not tapas bars. If we remain willfully ignorant of this trend any longer, then we are just like the Chinese who continue to deviantly eat rice with chopsticks even though they know we got the fork and spoon.

Maybe I am wrong, and tapas bars are the last vestige of a complimentary society that doesn't believe every enterprise has to be capitalistic. If that is the case, then I hope you get the chance to come to Granada sometime in your life.

Salud,

Hunter