NO TIPS IN MADRID

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 552, 3 January 1929, Page 6

NO TIPS IN MADRID

EXOTIC NATIONAL DISHES To the daring strange dishes are always interesting, and often attractive, and this holds as true in Spain. Innocent British visitors to France can even now be found unsophisticated enough to shrink with distaste from a delightful dish of white Burgundy snails or perhaps the even more delicate grenouilles a la poulcUe, a divinely tasteful dish of frogs’ legs. Such persons would presumably recoil with horror from a dish of rockylooking barnacles called percebes. I must admit that I myself eyed them doubtfully,but soon found that their succulent interior was as tasteful as a fine Whitstable, writes 11. G. Cardozo in the “Daily Mail.” Another strange dish, both in look and in substance, which is popular and in season, is called Calamares in su tinto. Black as pitch, it hisses and bubbles in a dish of its own. It is merely cuttlefish cooked in its own ink. It looks black, but it has a very tasteful though rather peculiar flavour. Spaniards now are anxious to prove that though they relish and appr<* ciate the best of French cookiug they have a culinary art of their own which is not limited to the famous “olla-pod-rida,” wrongly described so often as the Spanish national dish. Many a delightful plat of purely Spanish origin has been pointed out to me in the past few days. Perhaps one of the best was a cocido, or Spanish pot-au-feu, with chicken and a small round Spanish bean and more spice than its French cousin. It was a delightful dish. Arroz a la Valenciana was another exotic dish, perhaps overstrong with saffron for the ordinary British palate, but still with a character of its own. It includes cockles and mussels with large shrimp, chicken, and a hotchpotch of vegetables.

Wines Not So Good Spanish red and white table wines are of first-rate quality and make passable good imitations of French Bordeaux and Burgundy, and even of Hocks. But they are only imitations. At a well-known Madrid club recently a Spanish enthusiast for home-grown products tried to persuade me that a Spanish tonac was as good as the product of the best French cognac districts. I had no need to give my own adverse opinion, for his words were drowned by protests from fellow-club-men with perhaps less patriotic fervor, or say with more discerning palates. One fact which is interesting all Madrid at present is the abolition of the tip. This is complete for all hotels, restaurants and cafes. A service charge varying from 10 to 20 per cent, is substituted on every bill. Ten per cent, is the usual service charge for hotel and restaurant bills, while at cafes and bars it varies from 15 to 20 per cent. And what is wonderful is that the rule is really - kept. 'Three times in a couple of days I have had waiters running after me to hand back twopence. But, after all, this rule came out only on October 1, and it is early to boast.