Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Fri 1st Mar 2013

 

And before anyone gets all defensive with me, note the ironic use of the speech marks.

Another dreaded business trip last week to the North of the UK saw me and a few colleagues decide to venture away from our Hotel, where we decided that we would shun the cold and impersonal restaurant and their cook-chill cuisine in favour of something with a little more character and flavour.

I had visions of Fish and Chips, or some locally produced speciality Pie, but should have known better.

God knows why, but perhaps I should have known that we were on to a loser if we thought that we might find anything resembling the above in a Shopping Mall, but there you go.

Most of the time I am pretty easy going (or at least so my Psycotherapist tells me), and glad to be so, but I am sure you can imagine my dismay when the popular consensus of the group was that we should eat at a "Spanish" Restaurant.

Those speech marks again...

Of course, I love Spanish food - I just don't like crappy mass-produced food pandering to what they believe the commonly held stereotype of Spanish food is.

I should have known as I stepped over the threshold of the establishment, all adorned with straw donkeys and castanets, which looked like they had been stolen from your grandparents house shortly after their holiday to Mallorca in 1973.

Worse still, you can imagine my horror at finding dishes such as "authentic" Valencian Paella on the Tapas Menu - which contained chicken, Seafood and Chorizo. A Tapas sized menu of Paella ?

Perhaps one of the highlights for me was placing my order for food, such as it was, with "Fernando" (at least according to his name badge), only to find that he did not understand a word of Spanish, hailing as he did from Romania.

Spanish food, great as it is, is definitely as easy as most to prepare, but infinitely more easy to get completely wrong.