Pan Amb Tomaquet is a tomato crustini-type thing from Catalunya, in the north east of Spain. The words translate literally as bread with tomatoes.
The preparation takes a while to figure out, just by watching people at the other tables, but it is quite fun and tasty to have bread this way… Of course if you speak a little Catalan the waiter might give you a lesson.
Take slices of toasted bread, peel a clove of garlic and rub the bread with the clove. Slice a tomato in half, rub the juice on the bread, then sprinkle with olive oil and salt.
This is one of those things that makes you go mmmmmmmmmm… And it occupies the time while waiting for that fabulous meal.
If you love art for the good old-fashioned pleasure of seeing paint beautifully applied to a canvas, then this is the show for you. The curatorial goal is to demonstrate the influence of 17thc Spanish artists—Velazquez, Goya and Zurburan—on 19thc French artists like Manet, Delacroix, and Courbet. But in order to make that convincing case, the curators also happened to assemble an extraordinarily gorgeous group of paintings. Half of these hail from what is referred to as the “Golden Age” of Spanish painting, and the other half from a time when the French avant-garde never looked better.
