Tons of tapas

I have been in Spain for several day s and have been keen to find some tasty Spanish tapas. We did head off for a place P and T assured us served tasty tapas but unfortunately when we’d finally been allowed to board the ferry, they had stopped serving tapas and a ham jambon bocadillo (ham sandwich) was all that was on offer. With tapas in mind we headed for St Carlos de la Rapita to see what we could find. B had recommended a fishy restaurant but we weren’t absolutely sure so we wandered up and down street checking out the menus on offer.

Generally the menus are almost indistinguishable but eventually we plump for a likely place called Picardies. There’s no English menu but I have my pigeon Spanish cards with me and we laboriously translate each menu item and select our choices. When we tried to order the tapas we are dragged to peer at yet more odd chaffing dishes containing an array of unidentified tapas treats. As I pointed to each dish our helpful waitress rapidly explains in impenetrable Spanish what it was. I used my cards and extraordinarily poor Spanish and possibly identified some morsels for us to try. I places our order and then we also opted to have steak and chips. Rare (phonetically pronounced poko echo) for me, D, MC and solid little carnivore LLcT but be’en echo or well done for E(D).

Firstly it was whitebait which arrived in a lovely crunchy plump pile. These were consumed quickly. Then there were croquettes filled with a cheesy and chopped ham mixture. I thought these were rather nice.

Then fat prawns for those who like them. Next we were delivered a plate of slices of some sort of meat (maybe beef but more likely venison) marinated in a piquant oily sauce. I think this is more to LLcT’s taste.

Then we have the best tortilla we’ve ever had. There are two tasty eggy omelettes sandwiching a layer of sliced potatoes.

We are getting full and I’d forgotten that we’d ordered a cod dish in a chorizo sauce. Notice my cunning avoidance of any tomato dishes like Patatas Bravas (translated as fierce potatoes) which come slathered in chilli and tomato sauce. Hmmm, maybe not!

And if that wasn’t enough, and it was, we then had to eat the steak and chips we’d ordered. We weren't quite able to complete that. Yet another case of eyes bigger than stomach no wonder the Spaniards in the restaurant were surprised by how much we ordered.
But we'd had out much awaited tapas and despie not having much of a clue what we were about to eat had really enjoyed it.