Near where we stay is a restaurant called “Spanish Garden”. It is run by Jose, brother of a famous restaurateur in Spain. The food is really Spanish and the Sangria is really Sangria. We are well-known at the “Spanish Garden”. They recognise both our voices on the phone when we book. Jose comes out of the kitchen, sits down at our table and chats to us about life in America and in Spain, and we have a good laugh with him. What happens to the food in the kitchen while we are telling stories, giggling together, I have never worked out. The “Spanish Garden” is different – its immediate surroundings are indifferent, but the food, the wine, and the welcome are in a class of their own. We generally totter home on foot just slightly tipsy, often singing. Epicurus would have been delighted.
Today we tried to book a table. Jose has had a financial offer for the restaurant he couldn’t refuse. It’s strange. I feel truly upset. This is a spot that is sophisticated without being fancy, Epicurean in the best sense, European in its relaxed and humourous attitude. We have discovered nothing else quite like it. We have a restaurant in Washington that we enjoy, but it is our companions only who are the stars, not the staff, not the ambience, nor the food. Thus a piece of the jigsaw of civilised life gone missing amid the ordinariness of living.
Oh, well. Something will turn up.
Is the offer for Jose’s restaurant part of the overall process of gentrification? We have a similar phenomenon in London and some of the other major British cities, where traditional institutions and facilities are being brought up and transformed into more profitable, but not necessarily more enjoyable ventures. It would be a tragedy if the restaurant became yet more luxury flats or an office space.
No, thankfully. He is selling to a genuine restaurant operator. We went to see him tonight and be ame, as usual, a littlr tipsy. At some point he wants to go and live in the Canary Islands. A propos of nothing really, the north west island of the Canaries has an active volcano, and a hunk might well fall off and create a mega- tsunami. The natives have a common ancestry with the Berbers. End of geography lesson!