Saturday, April 20, 2013

            Spaniards are an interesting lot.  There are those who see the glass half full and there are those who see the glass half empty.  Then there are those who don’t even see the glass.  Monday night at the CIVAC we did a post-mortem on LAS 24 HORAS.  Instead of starting with the positive elements of the past weekend – 90 diners Friday night at the MuVIM, a sold-out evening show on Saturday, a sold-out Sunday morning show and 80 local registrants for the magicians-only events – the focus turned to what could be improved for next year.  As is the wont in Spanish get-togethers, everyone seems to talk at once and one begins to wonder who is listening.  The good news is the event was a financial success and we succeeded in raising some much needed funds for the club and the younger members who did the yeoman’s share of work for the event have volunteered to shepherd it next year.

            Thursday night the veteranos met after a brief hiatus.  For the most part we shared with Jerito the pictures that Susan had shot at the event.  They occupy two CD’s and Susan has taken the best of the best and has turned it into a book thanks to Shutterfly.  The newer pictures of me served as motivation for me to make up some new business cards using the services of moo.com.  They should be here next week.

            Yesterday Susan, Klaus, Zahava and I walked over to the Westin Valencia to try out the new Japanese restaurant, Komori, located in the hotel.  We stopped by Zahava and Klaus’ apartment and from there we walked to the hotel.  There were a number of diners enjoying their meal when we walked in.  To be honest, the meal did not have a good beginning.  Klaus and Zahava are vegetarians and there were a couple of items on the fixed menu they could not eat and that began what seemed to be a very strange discussion with the hostess who was to take our order.

            We were told that the everyone at the table had to order the same set menu with the alternative being to order a la carte of the menu.  This made no sense to me and so I said to her, “What you’re saying is if we sit a two separate tables we could order two different menus of the day, but because we are sitting at the same table we cannot do that?” Finally things got straightened out and we all had the same basic menu with Klaus and Zahava getting two vegetarian substitutions. 

            The menu consisted of: fried prawns with a corn flakes coating, finely cut white fish in a ponzu sauce, salmon tartar, nigiri selection of the day, California roll with shrimp, Iberian pork dumpling with ramen soup and fruit sashimi.  The cost of the menu was 33 Euros per couple with wine, beer and coffee being extras.  All dishes were fresh and tasty and it will be worthwhile to return and explore the regular menu to see if there are more complex tastes present in other dishes.

            Since it was a lovely sunny day we made our way to a nearby outdoor terrace and had an after-dinner drink and just chatted.  Around 5:30 we paid our bill and left.  On our way home we stopped at Nespresso to pick up some coffee and once we walked through the door of our apartment we stayed put for the evening.