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“You’d remember drinking horchata…”

By Ken Broman

I’ve had that Vampire Weekend song going through my head ever since we got our first glass of horchata in Sevilla. In Mexico horchata is made with rice, here it’s made with something called a chuffanut. No, I don’t know what that is either. It’s quite tasty though. Especially with fartons, a speciality in Valencia.

What is a farton you ask? I would describe it as a cross between a croissant and a brioches but long like a breadstick. Very tasty.

Our second day in Valencia started at the Mercado Central, which, it says in the book, is the largest in Europe. I don’t know, the one in Budapest seemed comprable in size plus had three levels. It was fun to browse around though and we did procure breakfast.

Thus fortified we next tackled the cathedral and it’s bell tower. It was our first major climb of the trip (one is required to climb at least one tower on any trip to Europe). As always, the view from the top made it worthwhile.

I thought it would be hard to abide by Spain’s meal schedule, but really we’ve managed to slip into it without too much trouble. When it’s just starting to get dark at 10pm that starts to seem like an appropriate time to eat. And if you are keeping busy during the day (which we most assuredly are), then it’s easy to go until 2pm before having lunch.

And if not, you can always so what we did last night and belly up to the bar for tapas. We went to a place called Sagardi, a place we passed on the street between our hotel and the center of town. It was always hoping when we walked by so we were eager to check it out. It’s the kind of place that, unfortunately, if it were in the US would be shut down by the health department in a heartbeat. All the tapas are lined up on the bar. They give you a plate and you just grab whatever looks good. This can be difficult as theplace is very busy and people are sitting at the bar and you have to reach around them. Fortunately the servers will also bring plates around of whatever just came out of the kitchen. My favorite was the chorizo on bread, and the tortilla on bread, and the goat cheese on bread…

When you are done gorging yourself on tapas, you hand your plate to the person behind the bar and they count the toothpicks on your plate to charge you.

There is a big cider keg in the wall and when you order a cider they open up the tap and hold the glass about three feet away and the cider streams across the bar. We tried to get video of it but something went awry. There are Sagradis in Barcelona as well so maybe we will try again.

The one downside of this place is that it’s very expensive when all is said and done. I would recommend going there for a quick tapas or two, but don’t make a meal out of it or you might suffer from sticker shock.

It was particularly galling because earlier we’d had a very fine lunch for a fraction of the price.

In the afternoon we took the metro out to the beach and walked the boardwalk. It was something like 90 degrees out and people were out in force sunning themselves.

Now we are on the train to Barcelona. We have three full days there and two haf days. Then we fly to Bilbao.

Tags: fartons, horchata, journal, valencia

Posted in Journal Entry, Spain | No Comments