Saturday, April 14, 2012

The royal family here in Spain is having a rather tough go.  The King’s son-in-law has been involved in shady economic dealings and his trial recently ended.  Last week the King’s grandson shot himself in the foot with a firearm that a minor is forbidden to use or own.  The King himself was hunting elephants in Africa when he fell a broke his hip.  He was airlifted back to Madrid and given a new hip.  I don’t think they made him wait on the benches outside the emergency room.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the royal budget has been cut and the King and his staff will have to get by with less money.  And you thought it was easy being King.

Last night we had dinner at La Mar Salada.  It is a five-minute walk from the house.  It is a small space with maybe ten tables.  It does have a sea motif with a plasma screen on one wall.  There is also piped in music that featured a lot of mellow music, including some of my favorite Beatles’ tunes.  There is one server out front and one woman doing the food preparation in the kitchen.  The menu is rather limited and the deal is that if there are two of you, you get to choose three dishes off the menu, one dessert and two coffees.  Most of the dished can be ordered as a half serving, thus expanding one’s possibilities.  There is a featured red and white wine each month and it is available at a very good price.  Last night’s price was 9 Euros.

After a bit of consultation we ended up ordering the mesclun salad with foie, half an order of croquetas de pollo, half an order of shrimp brochettes, half and order of lamb with hummus and a Carpaccio of cod with sliced potatoes.  Everything was very tasty and we barely had room for the lamb when it was set on the table as our last entrée.  We did have room for the brownie and ice cream, however.  We finished our meal with coffee and paid our bill.  The grand total for our evening meal was 40 Euros.  On the way home we stopped of at La Fórcola to say hello to the crew.  We were back home a little after midnight and we stayed up for another hour to let our meal digest.