Category Archives: food & drink

y más tapitas!

22 Thursday Nov 2007

Posted by in food & drink, home, nablopomo, sevilla, tapas

≈ 8 Comments

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Last night Nog & I went to La Estrella.

This is the sister bar of Cervecería Giralda, which re-opened last July after being sold in May. La Estrella was also sold a couple of months later (to the same new owners of the Giralda) and re-opened sometime in September, but last night was our first visit since the change over. As with the Giralda Bar, the staff and menu have remained pretty much the same (though unlike the Giralda, La Estrella also has the same old prices).

We used to go to La Estrella quite often because it is at the end of Agustín’s street and it was part of our ‘Wednesday night tapas’ routine. Nog would pick me up at 8.30 when I finished my class with Agustín and then we would stop somewhere for a tapita and some rioja. This still happens but Agu has relocated to the Plaza Nueva for six months while his house is being renovated and so La Estrella is no longer en route.

Anyhow, last night’s outing was more of a proper meal than a tapita snack, which is good for getting tapa blog pics but not especially good for trying to get my waistline back. Ah well . . . off to pilates class soon.

Oh, and a question. What does the background yellow look like on the tapa blog? On SB it’s quite a nice pale yellow, on Nog’s laptop it’s kind of a light ochre – but on the Jaguar it’s an awful, very bright ‘Simpson’s yellow’. I’d like to do a bit of a survey to know if I should tone it down a bit. If you don’t get much background colour on your screen, it’s the same yellow that’s in the google ads on the sidebar. Thanks!

lazy day …

21 Sunday Oct 2007

Posted by in food & drink, home, life stuff, sevilla

≈ 5 Comments

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But I guess that’s what Sundays are for.

Bit of a late start after lying in bed reading until about 10 o’clock (finally finished Lamb – very good!), at which time the idea of coffee and toast got me up and moving. Spent some time playing (fighting?) with my new website and then Nog & I did a bit of housecleaning. By this time it was around one o’clock and we decided it would be a good idea to go for a bike ride.

Unfortunately, the rest of Sevilla had obviously been thinking the same thing, and so after going to four bike stations (and annoyingly there were groups of people grabbing the last bikes each time we walked up) we decided to give up and go for a cold beer on a sunny terrace instead. Then a leisurely stroll through the barrio, stopping in at the bakery to get a baguette for lunch and then – whoops! – slipped into the Irish pub for another cold one before going home. f_ale.gif

And then I don’t know what happened or what we did. Mostly just this and that – had lunch, blogged a bit, played online Scrabble, watched about 4 episodes of West Wing (in between ‘activities’, not all at once) and . . . now it’s bedtime.

Boring post, I know, but I’m feeling very happy and relaxed after this very lazy and pleasant ‘cat day’.

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another tapita update

19 Friday Oct 2007

Posted by in food & drink, photos, sevilla, tapas

≈ 8 Comments

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Mmmm . . . just back from lunch.

My friend/student Paco has recommended a couple of ‘new’ tapa bars to me recently. Well, they are not new at all but they are new to me. It’s that thing, you know? You can walk past a place a thousand times and never wander inside … and then someone tells you they make the most amazing fried aubergine with salmorejo.

We tried the first place last week, just for a quick couple of tapas on our way home. Then we went back this past Wednesday (our usual tapa evening out) and sampled quite a few tapas. I commented to Nog that it seemed odd that there wasn’t much meat or fish on the menu and then I saw a couple of women next to us at the bar eating something quite gorgeous looking and asked the waiter what it was. Ha! Turned out we totally missed the back page of the menu … but we’ll be back. Anyhow, here are photos of the two visits, including all of what we ate and some photos of what other people were eating.

Bodega Antonio Romero

And today we finally got to try out La Taberna. A place that Paco insists on calling El Costal, except that’s not what the sign outside it says and it isn’t what the barmen said it was called when I asked them. But never mind. We had a totally fabulous lunch and won’t have to eat again until tomorrow. Check it out…

La Taberna

there and back again

09 Tuesday Oct 2007

Posted by in food & drink, humour, language, tapas

≈ 8 Comments

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Genesis 11:7 from The Brick Testament.

Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so that they cannot understand each other’s speech.

A couple of days ago I saw this wonderful video over at Ration Reality, showing a film that had been translated from English into French, then into German, then back into French, then back into English using a popular translation website. And I commented there that I thought a similar technique was used for translating restaurant menus in Sevilla. I thought I was joking.

Then today I was having a look at the referrers on my Sevilla Tapas blog, as I am always curious to see how people are finding the place. And I saw something odd.

Someone had used a translator on the Food Translations page (which is a list of Spanish food names translated and described in English) to translate it all into Spanish. And the curious thing was that the words that were originally in Spanish started going a bit wonky when they were ‘re-translated’.

So of course the next step had to be translating the whole thing back into English just to see if this is really how they translate menus here. And you know what? Well, just check it out and decide for yourself. Some of it is almost normal, other bits are totally bizarre.

When things stop making any sense at all just refer back to the Food Translations page. 🙂

Continue reading →

black bastard?

06 Saturday Oct 2007

Posted by in culture, food & drink, language, rants, wtf?

≈ 11 Comments

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Had to start a new category for this – guess which one.

Why on Earth would anyone use this name for anything at all, let alone an energy drink? Any bets on how long they stay in business without a name change?

Over at the Black Bastard Website you can contact them by email and complain, since this choice of brand name seems to be intentionally racist and not simply an example of a cross cultural marketing blunder.

Wandering further around the blogosphere today I also came across this BBC article about an unfortunate name choice for a restaurant in Mumbai.

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~ found on Letters Home To You ~