ARE TAPAS OVERRATED?

GRACE HREN: “I don’t think tapas are overrated. Anything that’s delicious cannot be overrated”

by Kevin Bonilla
Photos: K. Bonilla unless stated otherwise

Tapas are an essential plan when going out with friends and/or family. It’s a strategic method employed by restaurant owners to get more people to come. Evidently, the strategy works or the tapas bars and restaurants won’t be all over Spain, from the busiest of metropolises down to tiny villages. Be that as it may, could it be possible that tapas are overrated? Is it in truth the story of the cunning spider inveigling the gullible fly to walk into its parlor?

Though tapas have been around since the dawn of history in Spain, the bite-size dishes boomed into megabucks business because of their  surprising popularity with foreigners visiting Spain. Accordingly, I set out to see what some random study-abroad students and foreign students at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid think about the ubiquituous tapas.  Here are their candid answers.

Are TAPAS overrated?

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“You can have a cheap meal with your drink and a variety of tapas”

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GABRIELA

GABRIELA ROMERO (El Salvador): No because it’s good. You can have a cheap meal with your drink and a variety of tapas depending on where you go.

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“I love tapas. You can eat a lot of different dishes!”

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GRACE S.

GRACE SCHELP (Tokyo, Japan): No, I love tapas. They are not overrated. You can eat a lot of different dishes #variety

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“Better a proper meal”

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ALAVE CHOWDHURY (London, England): Tapas are overrated because the food isn’t that great or filling. I’d much rather spend my money on a proper meal than go to a place that exclusively serves tapas. Tapas might have some variety within its options but having more meals other than just appetizers makes more sense from a consumer perspective.

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ANDREW

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ANDREW LEVINE (Poland): Sort of since they typically only have like three options and they get old.

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EMILY

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EMILY HANDLER (NY, USA): Yeah kind of. I like the idea of them; they are cheap. Usually they are really not very good. But some of the more expensive ones are good. I like being able to try a bunch of different things.

“Some of the more expensive ones are good”

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ELENA

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ELENA KIRK (Italy): I think tapas are pretty cool and as a foreigner I know that’s one of the things Spain is known for. I don’t think they’re overrated although sometimes it’s an obvious tourist attraction and it can be a little too much.

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MADDY BAKER (Michigan, USA): I don’t think they are! I think it forces you to eat a lot slower which means you end up wasting less food and spending less money. You also spend less than you would if each person got their own dish. For me it has been a very social experience because you share them with a pretty big group of people most of the time and its fairly usual to ask your friends to grab tapas before or after dinner.

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GRACE H.

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“What’s delicious can’t be overrated”

GRACE HREN (Albany, NY): I do not think they are overrated because they are very delicious and anything that is delicious cannot be overrated in my view.

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It may come free with your drink but the quality of food is low”

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NESTOR ARIAS (Texas, USA): Tapas are overrated because although most of the time they are given for free with the purchase of a beverage, more often than not the quality of food is really low.

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“Tapas are good, part of the Spanish culture. And cheap too”

JAYCEE RODMAN (NY, USA): No because from a tourist point of view it’s something that is a part of the culture here that most people look forward to trying. I also think its good for people our age because it gives us something for a cheap price.

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Images
Feaured image/JÖrg Westphahl, CC BY2.0
Couple toasting with drink/Element5 Digital on Unsplash
Variety of tapas/TJ DeGroat, CC BY2.0
Proper meal/Jose Soriano, Unsplash
More expensive tapas/Jermaine Hou, CC BY-SA2.0
Menu and tapas board/Andrea E. Larsen, CC BY-ND2.0
Shared tapas/Mario Sanchez Prada, CC BY-SA2.0
Delicious tapas/Quesería la Antigua Fuentesauco, CC BY2.0
Low-quality tapas/fmohr, CC BY-SA2.0
Tapas, part of Spanish culture/GüldemÜstün,CCBY2.0