Small Plates, Big Flavours: The Unstoppable Spread Of Spanish Food Culture

It begins, ideally, at around seven in the evening, with a glass of cold fino sherry and a small dish of olives. Then jamón, the deep crimson of Ibérico de bellota, draped across a plate like edible silk. Then perhaps a tortilla española, still just warm from the pan, with its quivering, barely-set egg interior that separates a good Spanish bar from a great one. Then gambas al ajillo, prawns in a copper pan, still sizzling in olive oil that has been infused with garlic and given heat from a dried chilli. Then another glass. Then another plate.

This is tapeo, the Spanish art of eating small, eating often and eating with absolute conviction, and it has colonised the world's dining culture so thoroughly that its origins are almost forgotten. The small-plates format that defines contemporary restaurant dining from London to Sydney owes more to Spain than almost anywhere else, and the debt is rarely fully acknowledged.

The Geography of Pleasure

Spanish food, like Italian, is a collection of regional cuisines held together by shared ingredients and a common commitment to quality. The Basque Country has produced arguably the most technically sophisticated food culture in the world, with more Michelin stars per capita than any other region on earth and a pintxos bar tradition, small, elaborate snacks on bread, that represents the apotheosis of casual fine dining. San Sebastián, a small city on the Bay of Biscay, is a place of culinary pilgrimage that draws serious eaters from every continent.

Catalonia brings its own genius: pa amb tomàquet (bread rubbed with ripe tomato and olive oil), the rich seafood romescosauce made from dried nyora peppers, almonds and roasted garlic, and crema catalana, the elder relative of crème brûlée that the Spanish will tell you with some justification came first. Andalusia contributes gazpacho and salmorejo, those chilled tomato soups that feel, on a hot day, like the most rational food invention in human history. Galicia in the north-west offers the finest seafood in Europe: pulpo a la gallega (octopus with paprika and olive oil on boiled potato) is a dish of such simple perfection that improving it would be an act of vandalism.

The unifying Spanish pantry, olive oil, garlic, pimentón (smoked paprika), saffron, dried peppers, excellent cured meats and the finest canned seafood in the world, provides a flavour palette of great range and reliability.

The Jamón Standard

No single ingredient speaks more eloquently of Spanish food culture than jamón ibérico de bellota, the acorn-fed, free-range, long-cured Ibérico pig ham that occupies the apex of the charcuterie world. A pig that has roamed the dehesa (the ancient oak meadow landscape of Extremadura and Andalusia) eating acorns until its fat is marbled with oleic acid, the same beneficial fat found in olive oil, produces a ham that, when sliced properly and eaten at room temperature, is as complex and layered as a great wine. It is rightly expensive and worth every penny.

Manchego, the nutty, firm sheep's milk cheese of La Mancha, has achieved a global following that no other Spanish cheese has quite matched, though Idiazábal (smoked Basque sheep's milk cheese) and Mahón (Menorcan cow's milk cheese) are nipping at its heels among those who have discovered them.

Spain in Britain

Spanish food has enjoyed a profound influence on British dining. The tapas format was embraced by British restaurants and home entertainers with such enthusiasm that it now feels entirely native. Spanish wines, Rioja, Albariño, Garnacha, Cava, hold permanent positions on British wine lists and domestic dinner tables. Spanish olive oil, ham, cheese and tinned seafood fill the shelves of delis and food halls from Edinburgh to Exeter.

London's most critically acclaimed restaurants have drawn heavily on Spanish technique and philosophy, the ingredient-led simplicity, the respect for excellent produce, the conviction that a perfect plate of five things is superior to a complicated plate of twenty. The lesson has been learned and applied well.

The Pleasure Principle

Spanish food is, ultimately, an argument for pleasure as a serious pursuit. The long lunch, the early evening tapeo, the Sunday paella eaten with the family in the afternoon; these are not indulgences but necessities, baked into Spanish life as surely as the afternoon sun.

In embracing Spanish food, the world has not merely acquired a set of delicious recipes. It has adopted a philosophy: that eating well, eating together and refusing to rush are among the most important things a person can do with their time.

The Spanish have always known this. We are, plate by small plate, finally starting to agree.