All in Good Taste
- Natalie Penry
- Oct 27, 2024
- 6 min read
Dear Reader, can you believe it's been a month in Menorca?!
On this little port of mine, I swear that time moves differently. It feels like the town from Beauty & the Beast, a provincial village where everyone knows everyone and the pattern never varies. Being somewhere isolated without the usual four-season rotation creates a strong sense of routine with daily life. It’s curious to observe, coming from someone who expects leaves to change and schedules to vary.
And while I’d love to wax poetic about the intricacies of island life, I still feel like I need to experience the post-tourism season to have a good grasp of what it’s actually like to live here. There are barely four days left before we enter the Dreaded Menorcan Winter - you know, with no snow and moderate temperatures and occasionally rain - and I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing a new side of this city. Will it be like a college town in the summer, ghostly and longing for students? Or more like Indianapolis after Memorial Day, taking a deep breath to recover from the toll of out-of-towners? We shall see…
Today, though, I’m dangling a bit of culinary writing for you! Having spent the last week in school teaching kids about fall foods in the US, I’ve had gastronomy on the mind. Over the last month, I’ve sampled quite a bit of local tapas and, of course, attended the Menorca Cheese Festival. Here are some more memorable moments from my dining plan the last few weeks!
But First, Coffee
I've never been much of a coffee person, but the sheer volume of sorority coffee dates in undergrad taught me a grudging acceptance of seasonal flavors and chai interpretations. Even so, the drinks I like feel very stereotypical: flavored iced lattes that don't skimp on sugar or a classic hot chocolate. Despite consuming an impressive amount yearly consumption of coffee, those beverages generally don't fly with Spaniards.
First, iced drinks are a rarity here. It will typically cost you ~$.50 more to drink an iced coffee on a hot, sunny day, so I've accepted I'll be drinking a burn-your-tongue-it's-so-hot coffee to avoid the huge red "foreigner" flag. It's humbling to order an iced chai and have them immediately switch to English because they just know you're American...
Second, coffee here is...purer, in a sense. They have the "classic" coffee drinks here, without added sugar or specialty milks. Café con leche, cortado, mocha - no pumpkin syrups or seasonal flavors. Particularly here in Menorca, you don't see a lot of people working in cafés like you do at home - you might see someone journaling, but definitely no laptops or study sessions at the coffee shop. It's a relaxing, social drink, not caffeinated go-juice. If helps you to conceptualize it, there is not a single Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts on the whole island. My coworkers would be agog if they knew about American coffee culture, what with 7Brew and other franchise coffee shops.
This is all to say, I've had to expand my horizons with coffee. I don't think it will ever be my favorite drink, but I do love a social sweet treat, sitting at a café and chatting with friends or people-watching. I suppose I'll get over the lack of iced coffee now that the temperature is dropping...and I have to say, I don't miss the sugar rush (& subsequent crash) immediately after a 3 pm coffee!
Say Cheese!
I mentioned this in my post last week, but I was so fortunate as to stumble upon the "Fira del Formatge Mahón-Menorca" last weekend, a.k.a the Mahón Cheese Fair. In a very State Fair vibe, one of the plazas nearby set-up some cooking demonstrations, children's entertainment, local wine vendors, and oodles and oodles of cheese tasting.
As it turns out, Menorca has a thriving cheese industry, with the fair used to celebrate Menorca's primary sector. Being a part of the European Cheese Route, Mahón uses its cheese production to connect with many different parts of both Spain and the continent as a whole. There were over 30 cheese vendors at the fair, with intentional cross-cultural reach; they made sure to have materials prepared in four different languages to welcome locals, expats, and cruise tourists alike. I was particularly excited for the Menorca Cheese Recipe Book, stay tuned to see if I can actually make the "Mahón-Menorca Cheese & Mushroom Risotto" as seen in the booklet.
If I was a little younger or a little older, I think I could've spent quite a bit of time there. Kids loved the interactive plays and drawings, allowing them to watch skits or see live-drawings of cheese-based cartoons (think an astronaut mouse going to a moon made of cheese!) while the adults were more than happy to enjoy the weather with cheese and local wine. Call me a bummer, but I was not feeling wine and cheese at 10 in the morning, so I only sampled a few different types and absolutely demolished a Flaó Queso (cheese pastry).
I had never realized the true power cheese holds as a means to overstimulate people. Between the cheese sweating in the covered tents, the throngs of people battling for limited samples, and the general screams and shouts of the children running around the playground, the Cheese Fair was not for the faint of heart (or, as a few auxes discovered, for the previously inebriated).
All in all, this was really such a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. You can tell the community is really proud of the dairy sector, and I can confirm they're very good at what they do. I half expected to see a cheese or butter sculpture like our state fair, but I made do with the super cutie decorations and generally positive vibes!
Something to Tapa 'Bout
And, of course, we cannot wrap this up without a word on tapas. If you're not familiar, tapas are small (usually savory) dishes served with drinks. It's typical for everyone in your party to order one tapa and share amongst the group, so you end up getting great variety without breaking the bank. As a pescatarian, my options are slightly more limited, but I've still found a couple of reliable favorites.
Being in a port city means constant access to quality seafood (yum!), and I am always down for calamares a la andaluza (calamari in the Andalusian style) or mejillones (mussels). We keep saying that we're going to learn our own recipe for mejillones marineros, which would basically be like mussels in a red sauce. Calamari inspires a bit of controversy here - people have high standards for the dish and won't settle for mediocre. It can make or break your restaurant decision...And, if you were curious, calamari in the Andalusian style just means a dry flour coating instead of a wet flour batter like the "a la romana" style.
The other classic tapa to order would be patatas bravas, a fried potato with a spicy tomato sauce. In Menorca, it's also common to add some sort of mayonnaise to the dish because, fun fact, mayonnaise was created in Mahón! Like calamari, the quality of the bravas can vary on the bar. If a pub has good bravas, word gets around and we're typically willing to spend a little more on drinks for some quality tapas.
My roommates typically like croquettes (usually with chicken or some other sort of meat filling) and albondigas, a meatball dish, but for obvious reasons I'm probably not qualified to talk about that...maybe I can get a guest writer in a future post to discuss the meat-eater's cuisine here!
I've really enjoyed the food culture here so far, just how people interact during meals and expectations for being present. Even outside of restaurants, it's nice to live in a full house where we're all cooking concurrently and eating meals together. I'm slowly learning to make new dishes and find substitutes for my typical food staples. My mushroom pasta, homemade tomato soup, and chickpea tray bakes are honestly more fun to make than PB&J, egg white omelets, and tofu salad, not to mention more flavorful.
I've saved my discussion on desserts for a different day - as a certified Sweet Treat Connoisseur, I have much to say about that particular subject, and there is a LOT to cover here in Menorca. Bakeries everywhere! So much to try!
But there you have it...The Holy Trinity of Menorcan Cuisine (thus far): Coffee, Cheese & Wine. Buen provecho!
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