Celebrating tapas in America

It's US Tapas Week!

My friends, 

I think the Spanish have given the world many culinary gifts—jamón, paella, burnt Basque cheesecake, Ferran Adrià’s famous liquid olives…but the most important one of all may be tapas, the little bites that make up so many of our meals in Spain. As you may know, the word tapa means lid in Spanish. The tradition began in the south of Spain as people would use little pieces of bread and small bites to cover their glasses of wine or sherry to keep the fruit flies out of them…and it quickly spread across every region of the country. Now you see them all over the place—patatas bravas, tortilla de patatas, pan con tomate, gambas al ajillo, and so much more. (I even wrote an entire book about them back in 2005!)

Tapas to me are a trojan horse for Americans to understand the culture of us Spaniards. In Spain, tapas are a way of eating as much as a way of living, of celebration, of sharing small bites and wine, using food as a way of gathering friends and family together at this beautiful longer table of life. Tapas are a magical thing, you can sit around the table tasting a bit of that, a small bite of that, sharing this plate and that one, ordering another one of those because everyone loves it so much. Everyone has their hands in the plates, so you really get to become friends with someone, even if you’ve never met them before. And once you finish your tapas at one bar, it’s off to the next one, with another drink and a new round of small dishes, new things to try.

To me, this is very different from the way that Americans tend to eat. Here we like our dishes to be bigger, with a whole meal on them—protein, vegetables, and starches all sitting in their own piles. I remember when we opened Jaleo in Washington, DC 30 years ago, it was one of the first opportunities for many Washingtonians to try tapas. We were definitely not the first ones, but we were early in bringing tapas to America. Most people didn’t know what they were getting when we served them these small plates of croquetas, patatas bravas, olives, jamón…they thought that the dishes were too small, they were worried about sharing, they just didn’t get it. I started to go to tables around the restaurant and tell them about the “20 inch rule”—if you put a dish in the middle of the table for sharing, it’s tapas. If you don’t like sharing, you can move the dish 20 inches to be in front of you—and voila, they’re no longer tapas! We tried to make the idea of sharing more fun, more comfortable for Americans.

And now today, 30 years later, I feel like tapas have shaped the menus at so many American restaurants—they might be called “small plates” or “snacks” or “bites”... but whatever you may call them, it all comes back to the amazing Spanish tapa! 
 
This week, the people of TURESPAÑA, the Spanish tourism agency, are putting on a global celebration of tapas. At Mercado Little Spain in New York, we are featuring a tapas menu at La Barra all week—croquetas, gazpacho, gambas, and more. And to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Jaleo, we are having a global tapas crawl in a few weeks on June 27th! We will journey through Spain, Peru, Mexico, Greece, and beyond with tapas, mezze, small plates…whatever you want to call them!…at Jaleo, China Chilcano, Oyamel, and Zaytinya. It may be the best tapas party ever! I hope you and your friends can join us and celebrate the beautiful traditions of Spain and the history of Jaleo—or check out all the happenings during US Tapas Week from June 11th through 18th! 

Buen provecho!