I’ve been reminiscing about my time living in Spain after touching on the country a bit in my last, non-award-winning post. In many ways, I had a typical American expat experience. I met a group of friends my age. We drank heavily. We even saw a few bullfights. Though I suppose the most notable part of my time there is that I was in love. And she loved me back. She told me so herself. But in the end, she didn’t choose me.
She got serious with a Scottish lad. They got engaged. Then she hooked up with a close friend of mine. He became infatuated. Instead she fell for a Spanish guy, a young athletic type. But ultimately she chose to honor her engagement to the Scotsman.
She made a real mess of things. But all that time, I kept loving her all the same. It might sound arrogant, but I still feel that she and I had the deepest connection of any of them. Yet we both knew we couldn’t be together, because I was left impotent from a wound I suffered in the war.
I don’t want to drone on and on. If you’re interested in a longer treatment of expat life in Spain, I’d recommend this book about an American named Jake Barnes, who had a similar experience to mine.
If you’ve never read this author, you can get a sense for whether you’ll enjoy his writing style from his short story below:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
This story is famous for capturing, in just six words, the wrenching saga of two expecting parents, and their dashed hopes when they learn that the shoes they bought for their newborn are, tragically, the wrong size.
In that spirit of brevity, I’ll limit myself today to just one topic: Spanish food. I’m a red-blooded American through and through, but even I have to admit that the food on offer in Spain is far better, and more affordable to boot. If you want to eat out for under $10 in a major US city, the best you can do might be a large, one-topping pizza from Domino’s. Not in Spain.
For the same amount of money in Madrid, you can get a seemingly endless meal of cured meats, aged cheeses, and warm Iberian breads. The particular place I still think about the most even offered an all-you-can-eat option. If you’re ever visiting, the restaurant is called Domino’s Pizza.
Yes, the Domino’s in Spain have an all-you-can-eat option. When I lived there, it cost seven euros. To put that in perspective, in terms of US dollars - I became an expert at calculating the exchange rate off the top of my head while I lived there - seven euros is more, or less, than seven dollars.
Through the sheer grace of God, my first apartment in Madrid was only a three-minute walk from the nearest Domino’s. So I didn’t just go there for food. I also went for exercise.
I still remember the first time I went for all-you-can-eat, with my roommate Luis, from Mexico. If I had to describe the feeding frenzy that took place in one word, it would be “orgiastic.” (Though I have never taken part in a real orgy. Several times I have gotten close to having a threesome. I was only two people short.)
From the moment the first pizza arrived, we entered a flow state. Only one odd thing broke our concentration. When we walked into the restaurant, there was a group of four Spaniards ahead of us who also chose the all-you-can-eat deal. Their first pizza came out the same time ours did. Their second pizza also came out with ours. But then the weirdest thing happened. As we looked up to signal for our third, we saw that they were all standing up to leave. They paid for the all-you-can-eat special, and only ate two pizzas.
People are drawn to the study of the depraved. It feels like every week there’s a new documentary on Netflix about another serial killer: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer. But I don’t wonder about people like Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer ate just fine. I wonder about those people in Spain who were let into the Garden of Eden but left after having two pizzas.
We were on either pizza three or four when I swallowed another slice, farted, and said to Luis, “This is the greatest day of my life.” I don’t recall exactly how many pizzas we ate that day, because shortly after making that statement, I began to experience organ failure.
A few people who know this story have asked if I had an “accident” on the way home afterwards. I can’t stress enough: I was only three minutes away from my apartment. I didn’t come close to vomiting or crapping myself on the walk home, and for the record, I am lying.
When I finally went to bed later on, I slept for roughly thirteen hours, after turning in for the night at 12:30 pm.
There are of course many other restaurants in Madrid, but I’m not going to review any of them, because I don’t feel comfortable writing reviews about places where I’ve never eaten. There are also several well-regarded grocery stores, with choice cuts of meat and fresh produce. I’m not going to go into detail describing them, but the thing that stands out to me the most about these stores is that I also haven’t been.