My Patatas Bravas Are Better Than Yours
Travel Blog • Julia Ross • 01.23.08 | 10:37 AM ET
Last Saturday, my sister and I dug into a plate of our favorite tapas dish—patatas bravas—at Washington, D.C.‘s popular Jaleo restaurant. It’s always the first dish I order—hearty chunks of potato doused in a spicy tomato sauce and finished with a garlicky white sauce, best devoured with the aid of toothpicks. While the patatas are a best seller in Washington, they’re an obsession in Spain.
I was surprised to read in the Wall Street Journal that the working man’s dish has inspired hundreds of regional variations, fierce competition between tapas bars in Barcelona and a Spanish social networking site offering 1,500 listings for places that serve the dish. My loyalty to the “wild potatoes” will only increase now that I know there’s a deep culinary tradition behind it.
Related on World Hum:
* ‘A Late Dinner: Discovering the Food of Spain’
* Four Travel and Food Books: Paul Richardson’s Picks
Photo by creisor via Flickr (Creative Commons).