Eat, Granada!

Dear Reader,
I realize that you are probably not in Granada. But, of course, you want to know all about it, particularly my street (Calle Elvira), for the eventuality that you should come and visit.

Granada is a small city whose residents officially number about 260,000. I am told that this is of the people who are officially registered residents of the city; most students would be registered wherever their parents live, and people who are here transiently for tourism, people who reside here but are registered residents of somewhere else, and people who are here illegally aren’t included in those numbers.

I am told (and this is all hearsay, but both the population numbers and the percentage of city residents to non-residents during the summer have been repeated by at least two people who don’t know each other, and my housemate, who is studying immigration in Granada, backs up at least the first of the numbers) that during high tourist season, tourists outnumber residents. Given the number of hotels around, and how crowded it is during puentes, and how crowded it was from my arrival until mid-October, and how many people look lost, that really isn’t an outrageous claim. Conservatively, let’s say that Granada is a city of about 400,000. That’s half the size of San Francisco. It’s a place with lots of restaurants, and lots of immigrants, but somehow that formula hasn’t translated into a Spanish culinary equivalent of a half San Francisco. It hasn’t even translated into the Spanish culinary equivalent of half an Oakland, and it’s about the size of Oakland. Maybe I just haven’t found the greasetrucks with burritos yet?

As far as I can tell, there are 2 (two) Indian restaurants. Granted, I’ve never seen both of them, but the one that I’ve been to is called Muglia II, and the menu boasts of another location, called, of all things, Muglia I. It’s just okay. I was taken there for lunch on my birthday.

There are two or three heaping handfuls of Chinese restaurants, a bunch of pizza places, and a couple of Japanese places. A couple of places are combination Chinese-Japanese. As far as I can tell, there is no Thai, Ethiopian, or Vietnamese to be had. There is no dim sum. There are some Moroccan places that, for the time being, hold no interest for me.

There is one decent Asian supermarket that, naturally, is nothing compared to places in/around either Oakland or SF. It’s no Ranch 99.

Two things we’ve got in spades, though, are tapas and shawarma.