5th Spanish Meal: Tapas at a Neighborhood Bar

  • Meal #1: Simple Breakfast — checked
  • Meal #2: Savory Breakfast — checked
  • Meal #3: Lunch — checked
  • Meal #4: Merienda — checked

Two more meals to go in our attempt to eat like a Spaniard.  Meal #5 is supposed to be tapas before we wrap up the day with a dinner.

We were so tired that we decided to just head back to the hotel, have tapas nearby, take a nap and then go out again for dinner.

Granja-Paris-1-600x400

We did not care about where to eat.  So we went to a neighborhood bar between our hotel and the subway station.  We chose this one because there are no one outside the patio which means that we don’t have to deal with smoke.

Bad choice though.  It was because before we know it, the place was owned by Chinese!  There goes the whole idea about having tapas in a traditional Spanish restaurant.  Suanne and I debated about going to another place.  She wanted to go to look for another place.  I told her I am not going to walk anymore and this is fine.  Well, it was I who was doing the carrying of the backpack the whole time.  The camera and lens is heavy and not to mention that we had TWO bottles of drinking water.  Suanne is so fussy that she does not want to drink out of the same bottle as mine — germs she says.

Granja-Paris-2-600x400

The tapas here are made to order.  They don’t have it all prepared and on display at the bar.  So we relied on the pictures outside the restaurant to place our order and they then go to the kitchen to make it.  We thought that it would be better that way.

First item was the Potato which came with mayo and ketchup by the side.  The ketchup was spicy.  It did not look like that though but it was pleasantly spicy to us.  The potato came real hot as you can imagine having just been deep fried.

Granja-Paris-3-600x400

Oh we thought that Enchovies with Olives sounds great.  It was awful.  We had never tasted anything like this at all.  Firstly, it was very salty.  It was so salty that we both shudder biting into it.  It was impossible to eat this and left this untouched.  Oh man … urgh!  

Granja-Paris-4-600x400

Then there is the Deep Fried Squid.  It looked like onion rings.  The batter was not too great but at least it was edible.  It tasted so bland that we dipped this with the mayo and spicy ketchup.

Granja-Paris-5-600x400

The prawns were a lot different from those we have in Vancouver.  Vancouver’s prawns are plump, fleshier and “springy’er”.  The meat of the prawns in Barcelona we noticed have rougher texture.

Granja-Paris-10-400x600

We did not quite enjoyed this meal to tell the truth.  The bill came to €16.20.  The only good part about this meal I guess is that communicating with the owners is easier because they speak Mandarin.

This Post Has 0 Comments

  1. Jessica

    Really? You don’t share the same water bottles? The BF and I have been together over a year. Our germs don’t bother each other but I did draw the line when one night I forgot my toothbrush and he said “oh, just use mine”. That’s the one icky thing for me!

Leave a Reply