Tag Archives: tapas

pat in sevilla

12 Saturday May 2012

Posted by in cancer, friends, hope, sevilla, spain, tapas, travel, trips, video

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Dearest Pat,

The other day after reading your very moving post No More Room in the Bucket I kind of fell apart. Even though you had told me that you’d stopped treatment – and although I knew exactly what that meant – I guess a part of me just couldn’t accept it. It was only after reading your blog post (published on the same day I wrote here about still being NED) that it finally struck home. Especially when I read this bit…

“There is no more room in the bucket for big dreams like cross-country train trips. I feel a pang watching tv shows set in NYC, knowing that I’ll likely never visit my favorite city again. It aches to see puppies and kittens and know I’ll never own another one. I’ve never tasted foie gras, or truffles, or uni. I never got to visit the Food Network. I’ll never meet my friend Shawn in person or visit her in Seville, Spain.”

And well, I knew straight away that I had to take you out for tapas!

This video was made on the fly on Thursday with my poky pocket video cam and so my clips turned out pretty rough (one clip showing us having some grilled foie and tuna belly at La Azotea was unsalvageable, but oh well…). Luckily my friend Juan Tarquini not only offered to invite us for tapas at his fabulous Vineria San Telmo, he also very generously edited and polished all my rough cuts into something quite wonderful that I could never have done on my own. I hope it will make you smile.

Everyone really enjoyed meeting you and plying you with fabulous food and drink. It was actually quite an amazing day and I know you touched a lot of hearts here during your brief visit in Sevilla. You will always live in mine.

te quiero Amiga,
Shawn xx

For those of you who don’t already know, I met Pat Steer on the Colon Club forum just after being diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer, when all this was new to me and I was scared and looking for helpful information. Pat had been diagnosed four years before me. She became my sister, my friend, my hero. I love her with all my heart.

marmite

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in food & drink, sevilla, spain, travel, twitter, twitter friends

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

After a whirlwind week I ended up having a whirlwind weekend. And all because of Twitter.

About a month or so ago a Twitter pal suggested to @MsMarmitelover that she get in touch with me about an upcoming visit to Sevilla. So she did, and I tried to help her find accommodation for a couple of nights. But as it was the weekend before Feria there wasn’t much available that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. So I offered her the option of the sofa bed at casa az. And then the fun started!

Turns out that MsMarmitelover (aka Kerstin Rodgers) is one of the pioneers of the whole underground “pop up” restaurant scene in London, and in fact had asked me if I knew of any such “secret suppers” going on in Sevilla. Well, I didn’t at the time. But a few days later I happened to meet Fourat (@Lebanicious) and then a whole lot of magic happened.

Not only did Fourat inspire me to get my upstairs room set up for sewing projects, along with me getting her set up on Twitter and starting a blog, but various other projects started taking shape. And so when I told Fourat about Kirsten looking for a Sevilla “secret supper” she said she would be happy to organise one of her fabulous Lebanese feasts during the weekend Kirsten would be here. As for who else would come, that was kind of up to me.

And so Kirsten arrived around 7 pm on Friday. Of course I had already picked out a few places to try out for that evening’s tapeo, but was also playing it by ear. We ended up stopping at four different tapas bars (Casa Moreno, Enrique Becerra, Bodeguita Romero, Vineria San Telmo) all very traditional other than the last one. The extra challenge for me was that Kirsten doesn’t eat meat (though she does eat some fish and seafood) so obviously I couldn’t do the obvious – jamón, chorizo, pringá, caña de lomo, carrillada…

On Saturday we visited a few specialty shops in town, including Patricia Buffana (hatmaker extraordinaire) and Bazar Victoria (Sevilla’s most eclectic hardware store) and at lunchtime we did go to a non-traditional place which was a total hit – La Azotea – amazing food and service. Then back home to rest up for “Lebaniciousness”. Although a couple of the people invited couldn’t come due to prior commitments we ended up with a fabulous group including restaurant owners Juan Tarquini and Reyes Moreno, bespoke holiday organiser Sam Lister and Sevilla’s Queen of Tapas (that would be me). Along with Fourat’s amazing family. It really was a family affair and the selected guests fit right into the very cosy ambiance as if everyone had known each other forever. And MsMarmitelover had no idea – ooops she does now! – that this whole beautiful evening had been arranged for her visit here.

Next day (today!) I thought it might be possible to take Kerstin to one more fabby tapas bar before she had to catch her afternoon flight home. Of course this morphed into “tapeoexpress” during which we attempted to – and succeeded in – getting to three tapas bars in two hours (Eslava, El Rinconcillo and La Giganta) and having a special snack at each one. Then it was a quick sprint back to the apartment to collect bags and get a taxi to the airport.

In the end we managed to hit eight tapas bars in two days. And four out of my Top Five Tapas Bars in Sevilla.

Seriously? I LOVE Twitter for all the amazing people it has put me in touch with. Makes living as a weirdo semi-recluse in Sevilla *way more interesting*!

What did you do this weekend?

[also posted on the azahar sevilla blog]

jaded?

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in food & drink, restaurants, tapas, tapas tours, work

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

After five years of running the Sevilla Tapas blog and more than two years doing the Tapas Tours, I’ve been wondering lately if I might be getting a bit jaded.

Sure, a plate of perfectly sliced jamón Ibérico de bellota is still an exquisite thing of beauty to me, and I continue to enjoy trying new places and dishes, but more often than not these days I end up feeling a bit let down. Could it be me?

NAAAH! It’s them! Seriously, I am getting so sick and tired of tapas bars that open up out of nowhere and think that just because they have light fixtures made out of coat hangers or bring your cutlery to the table in a Hello Kitty pencil case that this somehow allows them to charge you outrageous prices for ordinary food (the 5€ tapa is becoming the norm in such places), and then add a mysterious “cubierto” charge that can include anything from bread to napkins to who knows what. In spite of the economic crisis here, new tapas bars seem to be opening every week and most of the new ones are trying to “out cute” each other, focusing more on style than substance.

Very glad now that I changed my reviewing policy back in January as it seems that more than ever people should be warned about these places. Frankly, there are very few (maybe two) tapas bars in Seville that can get away with charging 5€ for a tapa. The rest are just bullshit. And it’s spoiling what going out for a tapa is really all about. It’s about meeting friends, or even just going out for a quick bite on your own, knowing you’ll get a nice snack and a drink that is more often than not cheaper than what you could have whipped up at home.

Is this sort of pretentious dining trend happening where you live too?

connecting…

05 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in friends, social media, twitter, work

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

A couple of days ago on Twitter someone I’ve known there for a couple of years recommended that someone else get in touch with me as they were coming to Sevilla this week. And so they did.

This afternoon Peter and I met with Sarah Jane Evans and her husband Richard for a bit of a tapeo and we had a great time going to a couple of my favourite spots. And just before we finished up Sarah Jane gave me this book she’d written about Seville, which was published in 1992. Very cool.

Made me think about all the great connections – and friends – I’ve made on Twitter over the years. In fact, it turned out that Sarah Jane and I have a lot of the same Twitter pals in common, probably not so surprising as they are all mostly food and wine people. Good ol’ social media!

How do you meet new people?

red meat kills!

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in cancer, death & dying, diet & nutrition, food & drink, health & happiness, wtf?

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

First of all, read this very silly article – supposedly Health NEWS – from the BBC:

Red meat increases death, cancer and heart risk, says study

Now I ask you… who out there with even half a brain doesn’t know that eating a balanced diet is the healthiest option? Who hasn’t heard (all their lives) that it’s best to eat red meat in moderation? Same goes for fried food, rich sauces, bacon, butter, pâté, fatty cheeses … you know, all the good stuff. And so when I read that a study of over 120,000 people over almost 30 years “suggested red meat increased the risk of death from cancer and heart problems” I clutched my head in despair. In all seriousness, there is probably more “risk of death” every time you cross the street. And, although I don’t eat much red meat myself, I still ended up with colon cancer. So go figure. I honestly don’t see how articles like these are beneficial to anyone – must’ve been an especially slow news day at the BBC.

Meanwhile, that tasty looking dish up there is a divinely decadent combination of perfectly fried eggs (with slightly runny yolks), grilled spicy chorizo Ibérico and potatoes, topped with thin slices of gorgeous jamón Ibérico. But as delicious as it is, I wouldn’t dream of eating that every day. Why? Because I’m not stupid.

I still can’t believe that after years and years of going to the Vineria San Telmo I only tried that dish for the first time during my marathon tapas tours the other day. It truly is to die for. So to speak…