Pintxos
- Alex Rothman
- Jun 1, 2016
- 7 min read
On the last day of March I was in Sydney, showering my friends with opportunities to practice generosity: I let them give me food, housing and entertainment. Besides freeloading enthusiastically I had a chance to see a bit of the city. I got a haircut. I took a bus out to the beach and walked along the cliffs. I lay in a park and watched good looking people exercising and sunbathing. My friend Harry even drove me across the harbour bridge while he played loud rap music.
Sydney is a beautiful city. However the word that kept coming to mind as I explored Sydney was ‘wanky’. Don’t get me wrong, I rather liked Sydney. It is confident, prosperous, diverse and energetic. The people are friendly and cosmopolitan. The sun shines, the beaches are beautiful and the trains run on time. Still, and I don’t know why, the word was always there.
There are undoubtedly great people in Sydney, of course. I am sure there are hippy communities of lifestylers and sweet kindergarten teachers and god-fearing, church-going sales representatives who kiss their wives before they leave for work. But, still. That shop there, clean and sparkling and a little bit… wanky. Beautiful park this is with lovely fountains. It’s sort of… wanky. Ah, the opera house. Stunning. Majestic. Wanky. Do you know what I mean? No, I suppose you don’t.
Anyway, Sydney was great and, scruffy as I am, I enjoyed myself tremendously.
Then I hopped on a plane and flew to Europe. As we touched down in Zurich the day was breaking and the clouds were illuminated blue, reflected in the city’s tidy, grey lakes. After changing planes and slipping my complementary Swiss chocolate into my top pocket to melt through its foil we again rose above a blanket of fresh clouds. The cloud cover broke at the bottom of the Pyrenees and we slid over a Spain of crumpled dry hills, bright white air turbines, glassy lakes and brown roads.
From Madrid airport I caught a bus north. I practiced my Spanish as we zipped along the motorway, first past anonymous hotels and industrial parks, then through increasingly green hills and little towns of orange tiled roofs. Tu camisa es rojo! I practiced excitedly to myself. El pajaro come pan!
My friend Jake was waiting for me at the bus station in Bilbao. It had been nearly two years since we had said goodbye at the airport in Wellington. He has long hair now and a scruffy beard but was otherwise looking splendid and healthy. We descended into the metro and he helped me buy a metro card and pointed out what side to stand on the escalator and how to get on the train.
It had started raining lightly when we emerged into an open plaza. Water ran in rivulets between the bricks of the sidewalk as Jake bought me through the narrow streets of Casco Viejo below the steep buildings and balconies. Casco Viejo is the old part of town: a network of cobbled streets spreading outwards from a cathedral. The narrow streets ensure that the only vehicles you see are delivery vans full of boxes being unloaded by men with hairy arms. I felt naked without a cup of espresso and a cigarette.
We stopped at a big black door between a sidewalk café and a football club shop. We climbed up four floors on a wooden staircase and he showed me my new home: a cosy little room with a small bed and maps of Europe covering the walls. Jake made a coffee and he explained to me that we would probably be living there until June, when he and his girlfriend Brooke move to the US. He showed me where the towels were and explained when to pay rent.
One early spring evening about a month after arriving I was entering Casco Viejo on my way home. I was eating a boccadilla (a simple baguette filled with egg or ham wrapped in foil), when I came across a KFC. I didn’t notice it at first, but doubled back after it caught my eye while I was glancing in the window of a real estate office. In fact, I must have walked past it at least five times previously without knowing it was there.
There was no oversized rotating bucket of chicken in red or white or flashing neon signs. All there was was a small picture of the colonel above an unremarkable door and some quiet red lighting atop the windows. The façade was the same as those next door and there was nothing else to suggest that inside Basques could satisfy their carnal desires for fried chicken, for a price. It reminded me of a brothel. Somewhere I expect there’s a Pizza Hut where you have to knock the secret knock and a McDonald’s in which you write your fake name in a guest book under a pseudonym to keep anyone you know from discovering your other life of greasy vice.
I know there’s a Burger King across the river and I’ve seen a Subway somewhere, but otherwise the Basques seem to have proudly raised the barricades against the invasion of deep fried American commercialism.
Now, I’m no foodie. My tastes are functionally calorific. Fry it in oil and cover it with salt and I’m as satisfied as a walrus getting its belly tickled. I can’t distinguish between different wines, or coffees, though I drink a fair measure of both. The potato is my favourite vegetable. Fancy restaurants make me feel flustered and embarrassed. All this being said, perhaps the most instantly striking thing about Bilbao is the food.
People, at least here in Casco Viejo, still buy bread from the bread shop, cheese from the cheese shop and go to the Carneceria for their meats. In Bilbao, a city the size of Wellington, I have only seen a couple of Burger Kings and a single McDonalds.
According to the EAE business school, the average Spaniard spends just €42.61 per year on fast food, the second lowest out of all the countries surveyed, with only Italians spending less. Compare that to the Japanese, the highest in the world, spending €231.35, or Americans, who fork out €205.37. Even Australians, with similar spending habits to New Zealanders and the third highest spenders in the survey, spend more than four times as much on fast food each year as Spaniards.
So when I say that I have quite simply been swept away by the food here, I’m not just getting my kicks from food exhibitionism. It really is quite something.
Nothing demonstrates this more than pintxos. According to Wikipedia, ‘They are usually eaten in bars or taverns as a small snack while hanging out with friends or relatives; thus, they have a strong socializing component, and… are usually regarded as a cornerstone of local culture and society.’ Pintxos are evidence of what can be achieved when people are allowed to pay a lot of close attention to one thing. Every bar (and there are many, many bars) have their pintxos laid out for your selection, and come in almost infinite varieties.
As a culinary form the pintxo has transcended mere pleasance of taste to become an opportunity to demonstrate mastery. Each pintxo is the apogee of its genre. Its proportions and presentation are fine tuned. Just recently I had quail’s egg skewered between two olives. As if the beauty of this wasn’t enough, someone had thought to top off the combination with two very tiny little fillets from a very tiny little fish. The anchovies turned tasty into divine. There are baked mushrooms atop bread and covered in melted cheese, balls of cream cheese wrapped in cured ham and endless combinations of chorizo, seafood, egg, meats and vegetables. Just google ‘Pintxo’ to see what I mean.
And the beauty of it here? It is not an art form that has been elevated beyond the reach of the ordinary person. Pintxos, as well as being a zenith of culinary achievement, are eaten by real people in real bars: watching the football, meeting friends or simply refreshing themselves. They are not locked away as the preserve of the moneyed or peculiarly enthusiastic. My friends will assure you I’m as tight an ass as they come with all things fiscal, and I don’t have to think too hard before I point and say, “Quiero que un, por favor!”.
This connects with something else I have seen. I know this might seem a stupid observation, but since I have been here I have been repeatedly surprised by how European Europe is.
The little girls are dressed in little petticoats and stockings with neat little shoes and red bows in their hair. The boys in miniature shorts and sweaters stare through shop windows at baskets of bread and shelves of cheese. People eat olives, for goodness’ sake.
One particular moment stands out. In addition to Jake and Brooke I live with Jorge and Solena, another couple. Solena is from Cornwall and Jorge is from Galicia on Spain’s Atlantic Coast. A week after I arrived Jorge had his parents come to stay. One morning I found myself sitting at the table with Jorge’s mother and decided to show off my early attempts at acquiring Spanish. Through delicate and subtle questioning I ascertained that she works in an office. They will be leaving tomorrow. And that they like to live by the sea. Having exhausted all the conversation I had, I sat drinking my coffee too quickly and burning my tongue. I tried to send her my good vibes, smiling inanely like a fuckwit.
While I did this she sat there peeling small oranges from a bag with a knife in that spiralling way that produces a neat hollow globe of peel, the way you imagine a weather-beaten old man somewhere in Italy might peel his orange with his jack-knife as he looks out on the Mediterranean. God, I thought, how European. Here I am.
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