On Friday we snuck into the new small plates joint How To Cook a Wolf. The name is apparently a reference to a book about food rationing in WWII. The restaurant is more or less Italian themed and the project of a downtown restaurant chef/owner. No food was rationed in our meal. All the dishes were simple and well crafted. The space is pretty small (a former Asian noodle bar if I remember) and reminded us some of Sitka and Spruce. The most interesting piece of the meal had to been the pears poached in horseradish that came with our hunk of Spanish blue cheese. The mix of sweet and spice was pretty extreme.

Before the show we caught a quick dinner at Flying Fish. We hadn’t been there in years and sure it seems a bit dated next to newer hipper places these days (the older couple dinning next to us looked like tourists) but everything was still excellent.

I made good use of the foul weather to make some beer. I haven’t brewed since last winter when I tried to master all grain brewing. This time I kept it simple and did a batch of brown ale using malt extract. I did mix things up a bit and went back to the five gallon batch size. Which means had to buy a five gallon used keg at the homebrew store and upgrade my beer fridge to one that fits the keg. My online research led me to a Sanyo compact refrigerator that seems to be perfect for homebrewers. There are even web sites detailing how to attach a tap on the top but I will leave that project for later. I used the BeerSmith software again which was really helpful to keep track of everything.

Tonight I’m making the last batch of the “Five Minute Bread” from the NY Times. We have had great results so far with this recipe. It is not all that different from actual French Bread recipes. The key step just seems to be time, letting the dough rise for 12-24 hours before baking.

Afterwards we tried to get a table at Elemental. Just a warning to those readers trying to search out this restaurant: it has no street access or sign. Its on the ground floor of a new-ish condo building across from Gasworks park, up some steps on the eastside. There is really no other businesses around there open at night so if there is a light on that should be the place. (Or someone’s ground floor condo.) As with most new small hip restaurants they do not take reservations, but they also did not hire a host. We showed up at 7:30 and were greeted with an unfriendly sign saying: “Sorry but we are full and can not help you right now. Usually tables are available after 8:30.” With no place to wait for an hour we took about appetites to Pair instead where the friendly host quickly found a seat for us at the bar. Maybe we will try for Elemental again on a slower week night.

Also, I should note up-front that although the highlight of the trip was definitely sampling tapas, we have scant photographic evidence of this – in part because tapas bars are too dark for our little Canon PowerShot and in part because they’re too crowded to get a good shot and in part because the tapas eating experience was too involved to really think about taking photos. Many of the tapas were artfully constructed, but we didn’t admire them, we ate them. Quickly. Then moved on to another tapas bar for more.

And, of course, there is the matter of ordering your tapas. In Pamplona and Logrono, you got the attention of someone behind the bar and asked for (or pointed at, if your Spanish is limited) what you wanted, but in San Sebastian (tapa nirvana and pictured below), you asked for a plate, picked out your tapas of choice, and showed it to the bartender. Unless you wanted a raccion or other hot tapa, in which case you had to ask someone behind the bar to order it up from the kitchen. It takes a little more effort, but trust me, you want a raccion de pimientos (little spanish peppers sauteed in olive oil and salted).

Then there was the adventure of ordering off a 3-course menu del dia in rural bars when there is no printed menu and the waiter rattles off all the selections in Spanish and most of main courses are cuts of meat not commonly found in the U.S. That said, I’m a fan of three-course dining – start with a first salad/cold course, then a hot meat/fish course, followed by a little something sweet and accompanied by bread, wine, and water. I’m less a fan of the standard ensalada mixta – a mixed green salad that was topped with tuna, corn, tomato wedges, Navarran canned white asparagus, olives, carrots, and sometimes shredded cucumbers or beets. The mixtas could be kind of sad if you were craving more of a vegetable experience with your salad, but in general, Spanish salads were never the highlight of the meal.

Except, of course, for the salad I had at lunch in Laguardia (pictured at left; it’s in Rioja). After touring an underground bodega in the very picturesque medieval town, we had a Spanish lunch (at 2:30, lasting 2 hours) at a restaurant just outside the old town’s walls, overlooking the vineyards and mountains. This was by far the best meal of the trip. The salad had aged goat cheese, lots of fresh greens (not tired romaine), cherry tomatoes, fruit, and I don’t remember what else but it was the first salad I’d had in more than a week that actually satisfied my salad cravings. John had a baked goat cheese and apple starter that was perfectly respectable, even if not a salad. I followed it up with a main of hake with wild mushrooms, while John had the turbot (which is a very cool-looking fish). We finished it off with a cheese plate, consisting of three different sheep cheeses with quince paste, pine nuts, and walnuts. Yum!

While true cultural immersion would dictate taking a well-earned siesta after such an epic lunch, we hopped (or oozed) into the Audi to drive a few kilometers up the road to Haro – where we stayed in a converted 14-century convent and toured an interesting winemaking exhibit at the Lopez de Heredia bodega but failed to muster up sufficient Spanish to experience the free wine tasting in their mod, pod-like tasting room. Haro was also the site of our last Spanish-style breakfast – crossiant and a cafe con leche, eaten at the counter in a bakery, or if there isn’t one around, a bar.