The Next Bite Is Never Better Than the Last
The Next Bite Is Never Better Than the Last
Tarta de Almendra in San Sebastián
Tell people you’re sojourning through Spain and Basque country, and all they want to talk about is the great food. It’s true. The pintxos, the Basque version of tapas, are amazing. I never thought baby eel on baguette (which looks like a heap of writhing white worms) would leave me wanting more.
But what to eat the next morning when you’re hungover from a night of €1 pintxos washed down with too many glasses of tinto?
In search of breakfast one morning, I decide to stroll into a café in San Sebastián. And by morning, I mean 10:45 am. Luckily, the Spanish are on the same schedule as me.
I survey the breakfast pintxos (fried eggs and jamón ibérico on baguette) that remain untouched and then turn my attention to the assortment of croissants, bollos, and tartas set out on the other side of the counter.
Too many choices. The man behind the bar senses my anxiety.
“Que es el desayuno vasco más típico de aquí?” I ask, in my barely audible, high-school Spanish.
He shrugs while searching for a suitable answer, then points at a large yellow tart covered in chopped almonds where a fly has just landed.
“Tarta de almendra, este es muy típico de aqui.”
He heats up a slice for me in the microwave and I find a seat facing the sidewalk where I can people watch. The Spanish usually drink coffee, but I don’t, so he brings me a cup of tea along with the warm tart.
The moment before the first bite is like a small prayer of gratitude: everything in the world feels just right. I’ve got my notebook and pen, my Lipton’s teabag steeping in hot water, and my authentic Basque breakfast sitting before me, waiting to be savored.
I take a bite. My tongue mulls it over. The texture is somewhere between a custard and the mealy texture of marzipan. “It’s rich!” I think, because it kind of tastes like butter. But the crunch of the stale almonds, which are chopped to a size usually reserved for McDonald’s fudge sundaes, is a little repulsive. In spite of its butteriness, the tart has very little flavor and not nearly enough sugar for my sweet-tooth. The crust is the only bright spot. It’s hard to fuck-up crust.
I don’t force my fork down until I realize I’m three quarters of the way toward polishing the whole thing off. I’ve caught myself doing this before: you make a miscalculation and order something truly awful, so you keep eating, optimistically or foolishly hoping that the next bite will be miraculously better than the last. It never is.
But the sidewalk traffic is picking up, so I shift my attention. School kids on a field trip pass by with their lunch pails. A man stops by for a glass of wine (because it’s never too early to start drinking in Spain). The abuelitas are in the back, gossiping over coffee and enjoying the bliss of retirement. A father pushing a stroller stops in for a quick bite. The café owner comes out from behind the bar to throw a scrap of ham to a neighbor’s dog.
I ate many breakfasts after that revolting tart that were satisfyingly delicious and hardly Basque: fried churros sprinkled with sugar and a cup of thick hot chocolate, croissants and various pastries, scrambled eggs and chorizo with fresh-squeezed orange juice. It’s what everyone else was eating, anyway.
At the end of my time in Spain I had finally grasped this truth: breakfast, as in most places, is a humble affair in Basque country, a region where a cream-filled bun and a cup of café con leche are easily overshadowed by the surplus of Michelin-starred restaurants.
When you live someplace long enough, you stop seeing authentic and inauthentic. All you care about is good. Which is why, if you ever happen to stop at Café Santana in San Sebastián, don’t get the tarta de almendra.