IT’S CHURRO DAY.
Yes, after waddling home like the ice cream-laden ham-dumpster that I am, I have made the decision that come what may, today is the day I live my dreams and finally celebrate my 30th birthday by eating my white whale of a churro. No matter that my birthday was in January or that no one should spend this amount of dollars to eat what costs $1 at any Costco. The school systems and popular culture in America have told me to follow my passion and my passion is churros.
As I am following my passion, I will let everyone know if the money follows, but churros don’t seem like very industrious desserts so I doubt they’ll be paying me anything to eat them.
I am not the best at learning lessons but I have internalized a Very Important Lesson: Eat the damn churros when you see the place is open. Don’t wait. DON’T WAIT TO EAT CHURROS. This is a lesson that I will pass on to my children, who will ask me earnestly, “Mom, what is the meaning of life?” and I will tell them just as earnestly, “You are really making this hangover worse, here’s some money to go get mommy a churro and what’s our family motto?” and they will sigh and say, “Don’t wait to eat churros,” and they will run down to the local Costco to get me a churro and while internalizing my valuable life lessons that will ensure they become very successful presidents who are also doctors.
I walk with Dan to the Churro Boob to finally fulfill my dreams and eat of the forbidden fried dough in the garden of desserts.
Hello darkness my old friend
We walk up and observe the prices, which, for the low low sum of 1 euro, I can achieve greatness. Usually it costs me about $5 to pay a homeless man to tell me I’m amazing, since they won’t do it for less than that for some reason, so this is quite the deal and I am thrilled. However, they sell churros by weight and not by the stick, my customary form of buying at Costco and all Six Flags establishments, and their weight is all in metric so I’m not sure if 1/2kg is the appropriate amount or if I should get ‘minimo.’ Dan suggests we go with minimo because 1/2kg of churros sounds like a lot, and he is a smart man who frequents markets where they sell him things by weight, so I defer to his wisdom and approach the counter. Behind stands a pillar of the earth, a wise and benevolent sage who is bequeathing his greatness onto the fortunate passers-by in the form of churros, and I approach this man with the same gravitas one approaches a yogi after a long trek up some mountain in Nepal because I am certain I’ve put in the same amount of effort by walking ten minutes from my hotel to get here.
In a small and deferential voice, I say, ‘Yo quiero minimo, por favor,” and silently I add O GREAT WISE MAN WHO WILL FULFILL MY DREAMS, and the very normal and nice Spanish man does not even blink and squirts more fried dough from a FREAKING CHURRO GUN into the giant vat of hot oil that makes dreams come true and pulls out a giant churro circle, snips a few pieces, and throws it all into a piece of paper in a cone shape so I can catch every single tear I cry into it.
Dan tells me to stop getting the churros soggy so we wander around the corner to the little cafe that is behind the churro kiosk (really part of it) and, completely unsure of what to do with my newfound treasures, I sit and order a cafe from the nice man who is making them. I open my paper cone of wonders like it is a beautiful woman’s arms covering her nakedness that I am pulling away so I can consume her insides. I hold up a piece of churro and take a bite, and the feeling of eating my dreams fills me with excessive joy.
The man who made my coffee looks at me from behind his glasses and sighs, and pulls out a packet of sugar and dumps it out on my paper. He points to the churros and at the sugar in the universal language for, “Idiot, you are doing this wrong,” and I thank him profusely in Spanish. Dan and I enter a whole new galaxy of amazingness that is sugary fried treats, and we strike up a lively conversation with Jesus, the coffee man who is also the churro expert, and another man Adolfo, who chimes in because he hears me say, “Soy de America,” like the ethnocentric sonofabitch that I am, and he says, “Soy de Paraguay, yo tambien soy de America!” We have a nice conversation about both being from America, which by the end I feel like is pretty accurate, and that I have as much in common with Adolfo as I do with people from Texas, and figure instead of splintering the Northwest into Cascadia we should start considering consolidating all the American continents and taking over the rest of the world and calling the whole thing America just so everyone doesn’t have to answer the question of where they’re from.
In the afterglow of churros, we explore the streets of Jerez, and I remind Dan that this is where flamenco was invented so we should explore some things related to flamenco.
Is it cultural appropriation if we get married in this?
I wrestle with the hardest decision of my life, which is not to buy a flamenco dress because I a. don’t dance flamenco and b. don’t dance flamenco.
I think briefly about learning to dance flamenco in order to wear this dress, but I weigh that against my decision to only eat churros for the rest of my life, and figure the flamenco dress will only gather dust after I transform into a stick of fried dough and only wear sugar until the end of time.
Earlier in the day, we were enlightened by Jesus and Adolfo to hit up Tabanco El Pasaje for some flamenco at 2pm. While the internet implies it might be a super touristy joint, the fact of the matter is that everything in Jerez is technically a touristy joint, because it is just not the big of a place. We head over, and decide that it is irrelevant what the nature of the place is, because it is awesome.
Sherry out of a tap, I guess that’s cool
We arrive a little late, so it is hard to see the flamenco, but they are a kind joint and have installed this giant mirror to make it easy for the latecomers.
Get there early so you don’t have
to stare into the reflection of your mistakes
We return home for a siesta, and rise from our coma to go eat more food and enjoy the whole concept of eating at 9pm, which, as a restaurant worker and/or lady of the night, I appreciate fully and completely. We decide on a place called Bar Bocarambo, because Dan is interested in eating paella, and he has read that this place has paella.
We arrive and realize the next Utter Truism of Spain: anything that is written on Google is complete and total lies. Not through the fault of the reviewers, but mostly because a lot of places just decide to do a thing sometimes and then they do it and they have no interest in doing it regularly because why should they? Life is lovely and relaxed in Spain, they are not your paella slaves, so if they don’t feel like making paella, they will not make paella.
I respect this wholly and do not fault them for the lack of paella. The bruise of no crispy rice dish is also assuaged by the fact that everything here is goddamn delicious.
Cola de toro is a national treasure in Spain and in my heart
Spinach croqueta is like if spanakopita
and my deepest desires made a baby
that was socially acceptable to eat
By the time the sorbet made of fresh strawberries arrives, I feel like we have failed as a country, because the ability to walk in to literally any restaurant and be excited for whatever happens to you in Spain is alive and well, while back at home I sometimes walk into restaurants and they throw me out for being ‘smelly’ and ‘an affront to humanity,’ and the food is also not as good.
By the end of our visit to Bar Bocarambo, I am as delighted as one person can be, and I am thrilled by the experience and by the beautiful Spanish words I read in the menu that I will carry with me forever:
Les damos las gracias por elegirnos y al mismo tiempo le pedimos disculpas por lis fallos que podamos cometer.
Which they translate as, “We thank you for choosing us and apologize in advance if we fail you in any way.”
And is how I will be opening all conversations for the rest of forever.
Lessons Learned in Spain:
9. Put sugar on your churros
10. Animal butt parts are delicious
11. The Spanish will make paella whenever they feel like it
No comments:
Post a Comment