Giralda's chalkboard menu displays all the greatest hits of the tapas genre, including some dishes you don't think you'll like but you will: the ubiquitous red, chewy ham from the black-hoofed Iberian pig; a dense and silky wedge of potato omelet; cigar-shaped croquetas filled with ham; lightly fried sole and hake; a casserole of langoustines and garlic. The crowd stood three deep at the bar. Forget any notion of a sedate sit-down dinner; a tapas bar is equal parts neighborhood hangout, one-room fiesta, cultural institution and gossip central. It's where gregarious Sevillians, with their love of talking, eating and street life, feel most at home.
There are numerous accounts of the origin of tapas. The most popular, perhaps because it has the whiff of a tall tale, suggests that they were born more than a century ago in Spain's inns and bars, where a customer would stop for a drink and be given a slice of cheese or chorizo to place over his wineglass as a kind of edible lid, so flies wouldn't do a drunken backstroke through his sangria (tapa literally means "lid" or "cover"). Pablo had a simpler explanation.
"We're wild people here," he laughed. "If we sat down, we'd eat too much."
And someone might miss out on someone else's conversation. By my second night in town, I was a seasoned eavesdropper and had come to relish Seville's nonstop-party atmosphere and staccato beat. Pablo, Mercedes and I met at Giralda, then joined the flow of people on Mateos Gago, an old street over whose pavement orange trees dangle their ripe fruit and whose shops sell fans, tiles and tiered polka-dot flamenco dresses. Whitewashed town houses trimmed with yellow give onto courtyards lush with flowers. Hints of citrus and lavender curled through the air, mingling with the scents of olive oil and saffron from the tapas bars that anchor every corner.
In quick succession, we stopped at Cervecería La Fresquita, a dollhouse-sized café whose specialty is a tiny toasted sandwich you eat in one bite, then at Bodega Santa Cruz (known as Las Columnas), where pictures of the Virgin Mary and famous bullfighters--two objects of veneration here--hang on the walls. Outside on the latter restaurant's arched portico, we ate a dish of chopped tuna tossed with red peppers as sweet as cherries.
The night's finale came at Bar La Sacristía, where a classic tortilla wore a blanket of Roquefort sauce and plump shrimp were wrapped in fried eggplant. The surprise, though, was some newfangled elements, including printed menus instead of scrawled chalkboards and diners sitting on actual, unmistakable chairs and eating at tables. The unconventional atmosphere seemed to clear the way for confessions.
"I don't really like standing to eat," Mercedes admitted sheepishly, like someone divulging that she kept a few corpses in her crawl space.
"I don't," Pablo broke down and conceded, "really enjoy eating bulls' tails."
"I don't," I said cautiously, joining in the impromptu group therapy, "really like them so much either."
Mercedes, who clearly had her limits, stopped things there. "Bulls' tails are good," she replied, not ready to allow that the popular dish was a kind of misguided culinary machismo. "They taste just like osso buco."
Her desire for both tradition and adventure is typical of younger Sevillians. A conservative city with a love of flamenco, fiestas and bullfights, Seville embraces innovation, too. Tapas are an emblem not just of old-world simplicity but also of post-Franco creativity, whimsy and unfettered style.
