Restaurant signboard (not my photo)
[from FB post: August 8, 2016]
Menu del dia is a cheap two course daily lunch at most restaurants in Spain. It comes with wine. If they like you, they just put the bottle on the table. It's included
[from FB post: June 7, 2018]
Are you being over-served?
The restaurant next to my hotel is really local. I had a great paella today for lunch. It was packed!
"Hey guy, what do you want?"
"Paella"
"Drink?"
"White wine"
Faster than McD's, my food and drink was in front of me.
"Hey, I want more wine"
It came right out.
I paid and left. All for about $8
Contrast that with...
"Hi, I'm Roberto and I am so THRILLED to be serving you today.... let me tell you about our organic, panko encrusted, humanely raised pork-belly panini (which oddly has no price)
Just sayin'...
I can't believe I never bothered to take a photo of a menu del dia signboard considering those were my lunches on every trip to Spain.
Adrian FVdR explained and turned me onto menu del dia. Basically, it is a working person's cheap and filling (yet still delicious) lunch and the main meal of the day. Found all over Spain, menu always offers at least two mains, bread, dessert, coffee, and usually a drink (sometimes bottomless) at a fixed price.
My favorite menu del dia story is from Zaragoza. I was on my first big solo journey in Spain and Zaragoza was my first "real Spanish" city. I had just left Barcelona, but since the city was so international, it was not much of a challenge to do anything there due to the huge influx of tourists from seemingly everywhere. Zaragoza was far more local and I was a little nervous how it would go. In the old part of the city not far from its massive basilica I found a nice little restaurant with a menu del dia signboard. The price was low, it included wine, and the choices looked interesting. I ordered and the waiter brought me a glass of white wine (it was hot as blazes outside) while I waited. When the food arrived he topped up my glass and left the bottle. I looked at him quizzically and he said to me in English, "the menu says 'with wine', it does not say how much wine" and winked at me and left. Oh yeah, right then and there I knew I was gonna love Spain forever.
Actually that place in Zaragoza was not really the norm, although leaving the bottle on the table did happen to me plenty more times. Most places would let you drink two glasses and not up the price. Sometimes, they were strict about it which meant one pour, but hey, I wasn't complaining. The cost of one glass of wine in the US was the same as the whole meal. Menu del dia became an essential part of trips to Spain and the midday meal, my favorite part of the day. Wake up, eat breakfast, and head out for some full-on touristing - take menu del dia early to beat the lunch crush (usually at 2pm) - then back for some more sightseeing. Sometimes I had one glass of wine, sometimes two. Even if they left the bottle I never went to three - after all, I needed my wits about me to walk around a strange place and take photos.
Funny how something as simple as a restaurant lunch can totally define a whole vacation, but like "aperitivo" in Italy, menu del dia became part of what travel to Spain was all about. Thanks Adrian, I owe you for turning me onto Spain and letting me in on menu early in the process.
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