As everyone knows, the weather in England is rubbish. Even when it’s sunny, you can be fairly sure there will be a shower just as you’ve set up your picnic.

In May, we were faced with a long bank holiday weekend where the rain didn’t stop in London, but we decided to ignore it and go on another tapeo (tapas crawl). Sod the rain. We were going to pretend we were in Spain.

If you treat a crappy Greene King pub like you would a Spanish bar, it’s not half bad. The tourists just added to the atmosphere, and our two halves of cold Kronenbourg didn’t taste any worse than Mahou does in Madrid. And they had some decent olives to nibble on. Result.

Next up, the Queen’s Head and Artichoke. As a pub, it probably wouldn’t be our cup of tea, but as a tapas bar, it was great. They let us sit at the bar to drink our Bitburger and had a proper, convincing tapas menu, which we ordered bits and pieces from over the course of an hour or so.

Finally, we headed for the Norfolk Arms. It’s more of a restaurant than a bar despite being (we think) somehow related to the previous place. They were a bit sniffy because we didn’t want a table and a full meal but they put up with it. We put away some serrano ham, a few Estrella Damms and, finally, a couple of glasses of sherry.

When we left, it was still raining, but we’d very successfully banished the bank holiday blues.

Spanish version here.

Domus is an ‘artesanal’ beer from Cerveza Regia, Toledo. It’s bottle-conditioned, top fermented and available in various trendy bars in its home city. The marketing and packaging are fabulous, just screaming quality.

Unfortunately, the beer itself is a lot like one of our less successful homebrews: too fizzy, too thin and a little grassy. As it warms up, the toasted flavours come through a bit and it’s nice to have something with veritable hops, but unfortunately they have a way to go before we’d choose this over a glass of bland but pleasant fizzy Spanish lager.

Is it a step forward that something like this even exists in Spain? Our fear is that if someone does stray from a fizzy lager to try this they will simply be  put off craft beers and ales forever.

It doesn’t help that the bar staff have no idea how to handle it, shaking up the yeast and expecting us to drink it from the bottle which is (of course) the cool thing to do with ‘premium’ beers in Spain.

English version here.

Domus es una cerveza artesanal de alta fermentación, elaborizada por Cerveza Regia, Toledo. Se la puede encontrar en muchos bares modernos en la ciudad. La comercialización y etiqueta son maravillosas – eso, y el hecho de que sea refermentada en la botella implica que es una cerveza de calidad.

Desafortunadamente, la cerveza en sí era como una de nuestras homebrews de menos éxito: gaseosa, espesa y sabía a hierba. Cuando se caliente, los sabores tostados aparecen un poco, pero tiene que mejorar considerablamente antes de que la elijamos en vez de una caña de lager refrescante / insípida.

¿Es bueno que esta cerveza existe en España? Lo que mas nos preocupa es esto; si alguien la pide, para probar una cerveza artesanal por primera vez, le desanima tanto que no quiere probar otras cervezas artesanales y ales.

No sirve que los barmanes no tengan ni idea de cómo servirla. Nuestro barman agitó la botella (y la levadura) y no nos dio un vaso – por supuesto, teníamos que beberla directo desde la botella, como con otras cervezas de “premium”.

When I went on my travels a couple of years ago around Spain and France, I didn’t have a huge number of amazing beer experiences to report.  Nonetheless, there were a couple of interesting places  to which I was keen to take Baileythis time round.

The first was Naturbier in Madrid,  a friendly brewpub in the heart of the city. I was interested to see if Bailey would agree with my positive opinions and he did, although we both agreed that this time the “rubio” (blonde/pale) beer was better — almost as good as some unfiltered lagers we’d had in Germany.

The second was the Frog & Rosbif (Paris St Denis branch) which seems to have quite a bad reputation as an expat dive.  I loved it last time and was almost a bit nervous to take Bailey there… Would it be as good?

Yes and no.  The wheat beer and lager were a bit odd tasting, and the waitress warned us off the stout (“It’s not so good today.  Why not try something something else?”).  But the two ales were fresh and the atmosphere and service were great.  What’s interesting about this place is how it manages to be so popular with the locals: we didn’t spot any obvious ex-pats. It’s certainly not because it’s cheap…

Boak

El Corte Ingles, the big Spanish department store, has an excellent range of bottled beers and so, last week, we  spent a night on our terrace in Malaga tasting a few and watching the world go by.

As Mahou is one of our least favourite beers, we hadn’t bothered with their Negra, assuming it would be overly sweet and fizzy. However, as Beer Nut had tried it and liked it, we gave it a go. It’s got a promising aroma of coffee and pours with a decent head. It’s also got a good stout-like body which was a pleasant surprise. It tastes pleasant enough, not particularly challenging but a nice surprise from the Madrid brewery.

All the Spanish breweries seem to be pushing premium and reserve brands at the moment and Selecta is San Miguel’s effort. I thought that The only real flavour was alcohol – at 6.2% it didn’t seem worth the units. However, Bailey liked it, detecting toffee and fruity flavours. All in all, a bit like a festbier from a dull regional german brewery.

We had more hopes from two offerings from the Zaragozana brewery, who produce Ambar.  Export is 7%, and the label bangs on about multiple types of malt and ‘double fermentation’. It’s OK, with a malty biscuit flavour and comforting goopy body, but there’s not a lot else going on. It’s like a dull Belgian. Better than the San Miguel effort but again I require a bit more flavour from a 7% beer.  Maybe a bit of a tramps’ brew, all told?

Their Ceasar Augusta* is a different story, though, and a runaway success. It’s a bottle-conditioned wheat beer in the Belgian style and tastes like a maltier, slightly sweeter version of hoegaarden. We’ve been saying for a while that Belgian wit would be a good style for Spanish breweries to experiment with — it goes with the food, can be drunk cold and there’s an obvious link to Spanish flavours in the use of orange peel — and Zaragozana have done really well with this one.

*Zaragoza is a corruption of “Caesar Augusta”, the original Roman name of the settlement. There are references to the Romans all over the bottle including Latin labelling. Classy.

Boak

On a previous trip to San Sebastian (aka Donostia, in the Basque Country) I tried beers from the local craft brewery Pagoa on a couple of occasions. On our recent holiday, we we stumbled upon a very simple, very old-fashioned bar which prides itself on serving the best serrano ham, and which also happens to stock Pagoa beers.

The ham was, indeed, fabulous and the beers went really well with it.

If you’re in San Sebastian, El Valles is definitely worth a visit.

Boak

Our second attempt at a London tapas crawl was less succesful than the first, which you can read about here.

Our first port of call was Fernandez and Wells in Soho which was crammed. Nor did it seem to offer any beer, and what point is there in eating tapas without a cold little lager?

We thought we’d never find our second destination but it was worth the schlep. Iberica is pretty posh but the cheery staff made no effort to force us into a sit down meal. We sat at the bar, drank Mahou (terrible in itself, but evocative of hot Andalucian afternoons) and enjoyed a perfectly engineered Spanish omelette, some pimientos de padron and croquetas. Not cheap, but worth every penny.

Next, we headed for somewhere much more down-to-earth — Bar Gansa in Camden. The several mile walk stretched the definition of a ‘crawl’ and the English weather had us trapped under a bridge for nearly an hour while it rained and hailed with awe-inspiring ferocity. When we arrived, we were no longer feeling very Andalucian at all. Fortunately, more chilly beers and some very cheap, very decent Spanish ham put us back in the mood. There was music, there were people, they were young and alive. Good moods restored, we set out to our final destination.

Bar Camino was very trendy a year or two back and when you walk through the door, one thing is clear: no expense has been spared on decor, fixtures and fittings and staff training. Again, we sat at the bar (bucking the trend, this time) and nibbled. Sagres is Portugese and pretty boring but, on a humid afternoon, the freezer-fresh handled krugs it came in worked wonders. Tacky, we know, but very, very refreshing.

Olives and Estrella Galicia in a shady bar in London

En espanol

We tend to go to Spain around this time each year. However, due to starting new jobs etc we haven’t been able to plan anything, and so we started thinking about how to replicate some of the best Spanish experiences in London. In particular, we’re on a mission to identify all of the authentic tapas bars in London, ideally gathered together in convenient tapeos (tapas bar crawls).

Let’s make it clear: we’re not talking about restaurants that serve tapas or Spanish food. We’re talking about places where you can have a nice chat over some drinks and a tapa or two. Ideally, we’re looking for places where you can sit up at the bar and listen to old men bickering in impenetrable dialects, to get the real feel of being in Spain.

So, after a bit of internet research, we put together the following tapeo in north west London, an area we barely know.

1. Galicia, 323 Portobello Road

There are a number of Spanish, Portugese and Latin American places around here, but we were headed for Galicia, which we heard was popular amongst expats. We weren’t disappointed; we walked in and immediately noticed several chaps debating the contents of El Pais in a mixture of Galician and Castilian. We parked ourselves at the bar, had some small talk with the barman / owner and supped Estrella de Galicia (of course). We were there at about 6pm, before the kitchen had opened, so we can’t tell you anything about the food, but they were happy to give us some olives — for free!

We gather this is a hugely popular restaurant (Time Out review here) and they were fully booked that night, although if you’re prepared to eat at Spanish time (after 10:30) it’s easier for them to fit you in.

2. William IV, 786 Harrow Road

OK, this place is not a typical Spanish bar, but it does serve tapas, bloody good tapas in fact. It’s a huge gastro-pub with a lovely, large beer garden. There’s a restaurant bit with table service, but we preferred to order a couple of dishes at the bar.

Among the sea of bland lagers, and the Inbev holy trinity (Fruli, Hoegaarden, Leffe) there are also a couple of ales in good nick – London Pride, and a guest, the trademark infringing Cottage E-Type. There was also a huge range of wines, spirits and cocktails.

This place attracts a very mixed crowd, and was friendly and cosy. We wish it wasn’t so far away, as we could get used to a mix of real ale and tapas. We could have stayed longer, but we had another place to check out.

3. Centro Galego de Londres, 869 Harrow Road

This is quite a long walk from the William IV (bus strike) but definitely worth it for the authentic tapas experience at the end. Incidentally, there are various interesting looking Brazilian places on the way that might make a good stopoff.

The Centro Galego consists of a small restaurant (three tables) and bar on the ground floor, and a bigger function room / restaurant in the basement. It’s a cultural centre of sorts, so there’s lots of pictures of London-based Galicians doing folkloric things and playing football.

And it’s wonderful.

It’s incredibly friendly and the food is great, as Galician grub tends to be. We sat at the bar and got a free tapa with our first drink — a bit of tortilla, and a piece of empanada, a kind of tuna pie. We ordered a couple of Galician staples to go with the second round — pimientos de padron, and pulpo (octopus), together with some lovely seafood croquetas. On that subject, Leigh published a tasty looking recipe for croquetas a couple of weeks back — we’re going to have to give them a try now!

The clientele were a mixture of expats (one of whom we’d seen earlier that day in Galicia) and delighted native Londoners. We got very comfortable, and stayed for one or two more than we should have.

All in all, this crawl was a success — two bars where we can go to pretend we’re in Spain, and a great pub as well.

Boak

Notes

Here’s a Googlemap of the tapeo. The nearest tube to the start is Ladbroke Grove or Notting Hill, and nearest tube to the end is Willesden Junction.

Galicia is a fascinating part of Spain, tucked away above Portugal. It has its own language (between Portugese and Spanish) and some uncanny parallels with Ireland.

1. It rains all the time and is consequently very green.
2. It’s battered by the Atlantic.
3. Weird similarities in traditional music.
4. According to some, there are more people of Galician origin in America than Galicia, due to famine and poverty in the 19th century.
5. Getting onto the beer angle. Their major beer is seriously over-rated. Estrella de Galicia is probably my least favourite beer in Spain. How can you manage to have smooth flow lager? I also tried their 1906 “Reserva” which was actually worse than the normal lager.
6. The reputation for being twinkly-eyed, salt of the earth types. Particularly when it comes to bars. It’s a broad generalisation (I warned about those) but Galician bars in cities like Madrid and Barcelona are often extremely friendly places, with very good service and excellent atmosphere. What’s interesting is that I think we’re seeing the start of the “Galician theme bar” (i.e. like O’Neill’s in the UK), cashing in on this reputation. I certainly visited one in Burgos.

The food choice tends to be more exciting in Galician bars than Irish bars though…

As I had only chosen it for a stopover based on the rail connections, it was a very pleasant surprise to discover La Espiga, a genuine beer lover’s paradise. I’ve been to a number of places in the last couple of months in Spain that claim to be “beer paradises” or “beer temples”, only to discover they’re yet another weapon in Heineken’s Spanish armada, and that the exciting international beers on offer extend to Adelscott and Desperados.

No, this was the real deal. Around 10 beers on tap, including La Trappe Dubbel, Spaten Bock, Kwak and Liefman’s Kriek, and between 50-70 more in bottles. The selection was mostly the usual Belgian big boys – the Trappists, the Abbeys, the Deliriums, the Hoegaardens, but there were some more unusual offerings, such as the Unibroue range from Quebec.

There was a guide to the various beers, and the staff were knowledgeable and prepared to make recommendations. Beer menus are something I’m very keen on, as they help and guide the budding beer enthusiast – it’s amazing how many good pubs with big selections don’t bother with this step.

Best of all was that it was absolutely heaving with locals of all ages, enjoying a range of beer. Perhaps there is hope for the beer scene in Spain afterall. Maybe the Spanish beer revolution will begin in Burgos – I also noticed a German bar, and the internet cafe I visited had Barbar Miel and Kapittel Watou in the fridge.

In the meantime, here’s to you, La Espiga. I put this up in the hope that another beer lover who winds up in the area will google “beer + Burgos” or perhaps even “cerveza + Burgos” and will discover you too.

Notes

1. Cerveceria La Espiga is on Calle de San Juan, right in the middle of town. Cibercafe is on Calle del Pueblo (?) which meets Calle de San Juan at a big arch.
2. Burgos is about 2.5 hours from the French border and 3.5 hours from Madrid on the train.
3. French keyboards are the most annoying in the world. All the letters are arse about face. It has taken me an hour to type this.

Boak (homeward bound…)