My Patatas Bravas Are Better Than Yours

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  01.23.08 | 10:37 AM ET

imageLast 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).

Tags: Food, Europe, Spain, North America, United States, Washington, D.C., News and Briefs

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


5 Comments for My Patatas Bravas Are Better Than Yours

Ben 01.23.08 | 6:01 PM ET

I too enjoy Jaleo’s take on spicy starches and can recommend a few tasty tapas bars farther north should you find yourself wandering about Manhattan with a hankering for Spanish cuisine.

Jessie 01.24.08 | 7:32 AM ET

looks delicious. Need to find somewhere I can get that around london!

Katie B 04.25.08 | 6:32 PM ET

Haha y’know, when I was in Barcelona and Valencia this past fall, patatas bravas were half-fried, half-baked potato chunks with garlic mayo with the picante paprika sprinkled on top. Cheap, easy to make and available just about everywhere.

I’m interested if this tomato sauce recipe is something that the DC restaurant came up with or if it an alternative Spanish recipe.

Man I’m hungry… :)

majorca 07.15.08 | 11:56 AM ET

I had this in a great tapas restaurant in alcudia along with some amazing grill chillies - now i’m hungry

virtuosomaster 08.14.08 | 5:12 PM ET

looks very deliciouso! hmmmm can’t wait to cook this one

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