night 2: sevilla, la chunga.

There's lots to say about this night, it was our first "big city night", we walked from the catherdral and Bodega Santa Cruz/Las Columnas down to the river and a McDonalds-y beer terrace to talk about morbid shit for hours: the red dragonfly I "saved" from the pool; the infamous drunk driving decapitation from my "hometown"; getting bad news on vacation; the allure of nihilism and related danger...

...and then we were finally hungry again at about 21:30, so we slowly made our way through a semi-deserted and unpromising-looking "business district" to find La Chunga somehow absolutely packed. "Really?" "Why?" "What's happening?"

Nelson put her name on "the list", which was a chalkboard, and every 3 or 4 minutes someone would come out and shout a few names out. You really had about 8 seconds to respond or it was onto the next name. We had a couple of tinto de veranos in our hands and things were moving along pretty swiftly, so it seemed like a pretty good system.

Sure enough, maybe 10 minutes later they called "Nelson", and we flew over to the door and got seated. It was a whirlwind of activity in there, I imagine you really only had one chance to order, questions about the menu seemed unwise. But I must say, the first bite of this risotto was one of the best mouthfuls of food I had in Spain the whole week:

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It was a literally creamy risotto de calabacín y parmesano, with a solid hint of truffle in there somewhere also. Really good. There was also a goat cheese salad with walnuts and grilled squash, fine, but below, another really great bite, croquetas de setas y trufa con alioli de cebolla. The patatas bravas (also below) were OK I guess, nicely smoky and picante, but they ended up being left on the table in favor of all the other yumminess. Can't quite remember the exact bill but I want to say €21....I'm sure it was less than €25. Incredibly cheap for the sophistication of the cooking, plus it was vibrant and fun as well as being our first exceptional food of the week. By the time we left at 22:30 the waiting list seemed twice as long. Slight minpunt: really loud despite having no music.