Best Ribs in America...and now the rest of the world.

I went back to America tonight.

Not actually (of course), but Mom is here to visit and she (and I) were getting really frustrated that she couldn't read any of the menus when we went out to eat. On top of that, it's been really hard to find good restaurants to go to. We don't want anything too pricey, but we don't want bad food, either. So, after a bit of bickering, we made a silent agreement that Tony Roma's would be the dining establishment of choice tonight.

You'd think that if you go to an American restaurant in another country, you'd feel right at home, but I really didn't. We walked in and I told the host that we wanted to have dinner and there were two of us and no, we don't smoke. His final question before he took us to a table was "¿Español o inglés?" Yeah, yeah, throw me a menu in English since obviously we don't speak Spanish. I'm feel ashamed walking into an American restaurant in Spain. I felt like I was saying "Hello, I'm a stuck-up American who can't give your culture the time of day," and even though I know that's not true, nobody else knows that.

Mom and I decided to share a rack of baby back ribs, a salad, and some onion rings. Massive mound of onion rings: check. Bottle of ketchup brought to the table without even asking: check. Enormous glass of Coke: check. Salad drenched in fatty salad dressing: ??? It all felt very American right down to the music being played...and then they brought us the oil and vinegar. I guess it probably makes sense since Spaniards tend to eat salad with just some oil, vinegar, and salt, so they would have been wasting money to stock 8 different salad dressings, but everything else was so authentic.

Mom and I figured that Tony Roma's in Valencia is pretty much American, they just do it waaayyyy slower. The two men at the table next had a burger and a chicken sandwich. First of all, they ate it all with a fork and knife, which I also noticed other people doing. Second, they took about 45 minutes to eat it. They're just like my brother except that here, that's normal.

All that being said, we made up for our adventure into little America and had some chocolate con churros for dessert.