After several days in Barcelona, steeped in Antoni Gaudi’s colorful swirling architecture, including the extra-terrestrial spired Sagrada Familia cathedral, the fairy-taled magical Park Güell,
the Pedrera, an apartment building with no straight lines and a roof that offers the most amazing views of the city, and, of course, Casa Batilló’s dragon chimney, the more down to earth 1950’s Casa el Cherro invited us in to enjoy yet another face of Spain.
We’d driven west along the Mediterranean coast toward Malaga for hours and the prospect of walking a few blocks to dinner, even past several abandoned store fronts laced with graffiti, was very inviting. Our stomachs demanded more than chocolate pastries and juicy oranges, as wonderful as they were.
Casa el Cherro proved to be an intimate combination neighborhood deli, tapas bar, restaurant, taverna and meat market. I’d recommend it to you if I could describe how we actually found it in Murcia after navigating several roundabouts through narrow streets.
I don’t totally understand the Catalonian penchant for hanging dried Iberian “black” hams everywhere from roadside fast food cafeteria ceilings to fancier eating establishments. But, by the time I entered Casa el Cherro’s, the long legged Jamon, like pork stalactites precariously swinging over my head, no longer surprised me. If my Spanish had been better, I could have read what was written on the little inverted plastic pyramids attached to their bottoms. Perhaps it quoted Animal Farm: some pigs may be more equal than others. Or these inverted funnels may have been designed to simply catch stray drips. I had over the course of the past several days quietly watched these wrapped and netted salty legs, but never caught a drip in the act. Unlike our plumped-up fatty, rounder hams, the need for drip-catching seemed unnecessary. These porkers had taken on more of the dense aura of beef jerky. But I wondered, what sort of pigs had legs like these? Obviously taller and skinnier than any I have ever known.
Our congenial host ushered us to a table away from still other rows of hanging meats and with a soft, ironed white linen napkin with a discreetly woven "Casa el Cherro" safely tucked in my lap, I pretended to read the menu. No pictures. No alternative English explanations. Every now and then a white-aproned grandfatherly or elderly uncle figure appeared from what must be the kitchen back there just behind a lighted curio cabinet sporting a glass-enclosed…you guessed it…super-huge pig leg.
In my halting Spanish, I asked what was the soup. Caliente, I hoped. Si. What’s in it?
“It is what it is.” That’s what he said. I ordered it and I loved it, although I did share little hunks of what I determined was liver, to my liver-loving husband.
So that’s how I got my new soup-mantra. And I feel it will apply to anything 2012 dishes up. I’ll look at it, recognize a few floating bits, be curious about what else lurks below the surface, but I’ll calmly enjoy it because… “It is what it is.”
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