The Slow Death of Spain’s Menú del Día
Food is at the heart of Spanish culture. From social life to business deals, everything revolves around food---above all, lunch. How did Mariano Rajoy, then prime minister, react in 2018 when faced with an unprecedented (前所未有的) vote of no confidence? He went to lunch ... for eight hours.
The three-course menú del día (menu of the day) has been the cornerstone of Spanish food and social life for generations.
The fixed-price menú del día as we now know it was first introduced in the mid-1960s as the “tourist menu,” which helped to ensure that an affordable meal would be within the financial reach of all Spaniards.
But now working life has changed. Fewer people split the workday with a two-hour break for lunch. “People are realizing that an hour is long enough for lunch,” says José Luis Casero. Furthermore, a decreasing percentage of Spaniards have full-time jobs. Trade unions (工会) estimate 33 percent of jobs that have been created since 2012 are temporary. New professions such as delivery riders do not receive paid lunch breaks. Throughout many Spanish cities today, what may have once been restaurants serving menú del día have already been reborn as kebab (烤肉串) shops or, in more touristy areas, tapas bars (西班牙小食吧).
These days, the tradition only continues to endure in small numbers of restaurants in Spain. Just around the corner from city hall and with mayor Ada Colau being one of its regulars, Cervantes has been a family-run restaurant since the early 1980s. It is now managed by the Esteve sisters: Glòria, Cristina and Gemma. The C13 menú of classic Spanish dishes is chalked up on a board.
“I cook more or less what my mother cooked,” says Glòria. “I know what I know and people like that. It’s all homemade.” “All kinds of people eat here, from officials to builders,” adds Gemma. “There’re people who come to Cervantes for the first time and say: ‘Wow, I didn’t know this sort of place still existed.’ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘we’ve always been here.’”
| A．It changes with the seasons, but only slightly. |
| B．They are less likely to honor the menú tradition. |
| C．They often make just enough to maintain the families that run them. |
| D．People see changes in a place like this as an attack on their lifestyle. |
| E．All of these types of restaurants had to offer at least one of these on its menus until the law was changed in 2010. |
| F．Consequently, the restaurants serving these menus — generally low on aesthetics (美观性) and high on value for money — have been a feature of the urban landscape. |
