chez pim

More tapas action, this time Pamplona

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Here are some photos from another tapas crawl, this time Pamplona. Admittedly it wasn't such a successful one, so I'm afraid I might not have much to tell. It was something of a surprise, actually, since Pamplona is practically a stone's throw from San Sebastian, which has long ago staked the claim as the birthplace of tapas.

I should also admit though that we didn't give the town much of a chance. We didn't set out on the crawl until well after ten, which would have been a great time to begin had we been in San Sebastian or Barcelona, but, as it turns out, the denizens of Pamplona go to bed much earlier than their compatriots. We stopped first at a 'nouveau' tapas bar called Gaucho. The fares didn't look so good, but the bar came with such a good recommendation that we decided to pick a few things to try. We should have listened to our eyes and nose, actually, as we were even less impressed after tasting them.

Having consoled ourselves properly with a sherry and a beer or two, we set out to Calle San Nicolas to find other recommended places. Unfortunately, we found one place after another closed, or in the process of closing. The few remaining places were sparsely populated, and the food didn't look so good.

Rias de Galicia

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What does it tell you when you sit down to dinner at a restaurant and, a few minutes later, one of the most famous chefs in the world comes in and sit down at the next table? It says this is gonna be good, this time at least.

No, this wasn't at some fancy do. It wasn't planned, even. It was at a random restaurant, on a random night, entirely by accident.

Well, I supposed it's not so random. The town was Barcelona. The night was Monday, when most other places are closed. And the place was arguably the best seafood restaurant in town. The chef wasn't random either. Half of you probably guessed who it was already. Yes, none other than Ferran Adrià.

And, no, I'm not about to recount a seafood dinner with spherical langouste or pulpito espuma -not that oyster dirt wouldn't be fun once in a while, I guess. But you won't find any modern wizardry or technique here. No Centrifuge. No chemical additives. Nor will you find italics or "quotation marks" on the menu, I promise you.

This place is simple, supremely simple, and brilliantly so. It's called Rias de Galicia. I first thought it meant the joy of Galicia or some such approximation. Me no speako Espagnol. Happily Wikipedia (and my friend Pedro) rescued me from saying such outlandish a thing on my blog for all to see. In fact, the rias of Galicia were once river valley and estuaries that are now covered by the risen seawater. It's that special geographic characteristic of the Galician coast -where the Cantabrian sea meets the vast Atlantic ocean- that makes it such a fertile area for seafood.

The Thief Who Invented The No-Knead Bread Recipe

I was about to quit harping on the Voncigars thief already, but then I came across yet more outrageousness on his blog. Your jaws will drop too, just read on.

Any foodie worth her fleur de sel knows that No-Knead Bread recipe Mark Bittman published in the NY Times last year. The original recipe came from Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery. It's the kind of revolutionary recipe that got everyone talking and baking, not to mention oohing and aahing over the results.

Well, the abominable Mr.Voncigars has got a post on his blog titled "Spectacular And Easy - The Perfect Home Baked Loaf Of Bread." His recipe looks a whole lot similar to that no-knead bread Mark Bittman made famous. Actually, it looks closer to Jeffrey Steingarten's adaptation of that recipe -specifying SAF yeast was the clue. True to form, the thief made no mention of Lahey, Bittman, or Steingarten -nor did he mention some innocent blogger whose series of pictures he proudly displays on that post. (Recognize that gorgeous loaf of bread? I took the photo from the thief's post. Is it yours or do you know whose it is?)

This is what he had to say about the recipe..

The Thief Speaks, Still A Wanker

That thieving Voncigars came out to speak, quite a bit in fact, on a rambling email to me (two now in fact), a comment on Chez Pim, a comment on Food Blog S'cool, and an 'editorial' note appended to the post he stole from me on his blog –all of them apologetic sounding, and quite indignant at that. Yet in none of them did he take responsibility or admit culpability for the theft he'd himself committed.

I mean, does this sound like a sincere apology to you?

"We have published a post (Paco Meralgo) using original pictures/content from "Chez Pim" without properly crediting "Chez Pim" for these. We do apologize for that to "Chez Pim" and its readers. We have removed the pictures and added an adequate editors-comment to the respective post. We hope that this matter can be concluded that way and would ask everybody to abstain from leaving vulgar and obscene, anonymous comments on our site. Again, we do apologize.

Daniel/editor VONCIGARS"

This is hardly a mea culpa. He made it sound as if this all happened inadvertently, and somehow not with a deliberate intent to steal. And what's with the royal we anyway? Bullocks. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he's not sorry about anything but having been caught. Pathetic. Really.

It is even more outrageous when you look at the content of his post after he had edited it and removed my pictures.* Let me show you two original passages from Chez Pim and two passages that are still on his blog after he had "immediately corrected this situation."

First this one from Chez Pim..

Voncigars: shame on you blog thief!!

If you have a blog, I'm sure you've had your stuff stolen by blog thieves who take contents and photographs from other bloggers and present them as their own. I don't usually write about it every time one of my posts is stolen, because writing about these thieving blogs and and linking to them would surely increase their page views –from the pitiful twenty or so a day to thousands. But I found a particularly onerous one today, and I think a public shaming is called for on this one.

These vampire blogs are the bane of a blogger's existence. They are far too stupid and unimaginative to have their own content, and must get by with stealing other people's work. The marginally less annoying ones disguise themselves as aggregator blogs, but –unlike legit aggregator blogs- they often take post contents without permission and use dubious and obscure credits and link-back.

This particular one I just found, Voncigars, is much worse. This guy took my post on Paco Meralgo, a tapas bar in Barcelona, and reposted the pictures and shamelessly edited the post texts into his own voice –so that it appears that he himself was the one who visited the tapas bar, ate the meal, and wrote the review. All that with not a mention of Chez Pim as the source for anything on that post.

From the look of his blog, with texts and photographs done in so many different styles, I bet that this wasn't his first time. He might have stolen from you even. You might want to check out his archives.

Paco Meralgo – comer algo, get it?

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Never mind. I didn't get it either. It took our friend the Silly Disciple to point out the pun, and then David to translate it. I can be that thick sometimes. You still didn't get it? What's Google Language Tools for?

Paco Meralgo is a tapas bar in a town full of tapas bars, Barcelona. With a roster of names like Pinotxo and Quim in the Boqueria market and the world famous –you either love it or hate it- Cal Pep, just to name a few, it's easy for yet another tapas bar to get lost in the fray. Paco Meralgo distinguish themselves with not only good tapas fares –easy enough to find in this town- but by opening every day of the week. Now that's something you don't find every day. Ha ha –I'm just so full of puns today. Even more amazing is that they somehow manage to have fresh seafoods even on Sundays and Mondays. Never mind what that Bourdain told you. It's really quite safe to eat seafood at Paco Meralgo even on those days. The quality is evident enough in the photos above, so if you didn't believe me you could see for yourself.

How to order coffee in Spain

While I'm not much of a fan of coffee in France, I love coffee in Spain. I particularly adore it when a matronly waitress comes to my breakfast table with two giant, steaming pots, one filled with dark coffee and the other hot milk, and then performs a delicate balancing –and dangerous- act of pouring both at once into a waiting coffee cup. I wince every time, but I've yet to see a spill. Quite extraordinary really! That particular style of coffee is called Café con Leche, coffee with milk, quite likely the most popular breakfast beverage in Spain.

My other favorite –especially to drink in the afternoon- has a bit less milk, and is called Café Cortado. It's basically an espresso cut with just a little bit of milk. Even better than Café Cortado is Carajillo, espresso spiked with liquor (often brandy or whiskey), which comes in quite handy after a long and full night of tapas crawling.