Last Days of the Bus Club (12 page)

The gathering round the table in the street had impressed upon me the serious nature of our task. A great deal of hope and investment in effort and time had gone into the
concurso
and I resolved to play my part. Accordingly, next morning I woke the Doctor early, and after a light breakfast, took him for a long brisk walk along the beach. Other people were walking their dogs, flirting with the idea of going in the water – ‘The Atlantic Ocean in May!’ shuddered Michael – or combing the sand with metal detectors, looking, so they told us, for coins and jewels dropped from people’s pockets. We strode barefoot and with our trouser legs rolled up, like gay ice-cream salesmen, beneath the invisible nylon lines of fishermen fishing from the beach. We peered
sympathetically
into their empty buckets.

Half a kilometre off the beach were the buoys of the
almadraba
nets. We wondered that the tuna would swim so far inshore when there was the whole of the strait at their disposal. ‘I expect it’s because of the currents,’ I informed Michael. ‘There’ll be eddies along the shore that they can swim with, whereas they would be pushed to make
headway
against the massive bodies of water moving through the centre of the straits.’ I stopped for a minute to marvel at this perspicacious piece of deduction.

The sun was getting higher and the heat of the day was starting to make itself felt. ‘We’d better be getting along,’ said Michael, ‘it’s quarter-past eleven and the
c-concurso
k-kicks off at half-past.’

Half-past eleven seemed cruelly early for a gastronomic
concurso
. I wasn’t in the least bit hungry. But we scuffed the sand from our feet on the boardwalk, slipped into our shoes and walked up to the Escuela de Hostelería to our fearful task. I felt just the littlest bit sick.

The place was already packed out. There was a patio all decked up for festivity with a lot of umbrellas and chairs brightly emblazoned with a brewery logo; there was a
venencero
– one of those coves who, dressed in medieval costume, miraculously dispenses sherry from a barrel with a silver cup on the end of a long whippy cane; and there was a free bar. Things were shaping up nicely and the Doctor and I began to feel more positive about the coming ordeal. We glided through the already raucous throng, smiling and nodding benignly – although clearly nobody had the
faintest
idea who we were – towards the bar.

There we were both grasped firmly from behind. Our captors were Pepa and Mari-Carmen.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ they said, almost in chorus.

‘D-don’t w-what? …’ stammered the Doctor and I in unison, a little taken aback.

‘You mustn’t mingle with the general public. If we let you in there, who knows what might happen to you? And you mustn’t drink. Jurors drink only water.’

‘W-water!?’ blubbered the Doc, incredulous. ‘We can’t drink water … water drowns the taste buds; it stupefies the palate, distends the belly. It oxidises the critical faculties, dilutes acuity. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.’

But Pepa and Mari-Carmen were having none of it. They steered us to an enclosure separated from the patio and its public by the thinnest of screens, where two big round tables were set with heaps of gleaming cutlery, napkins, and bottles of water. We were the only people in there. We looked at one another in dismay; coming through the thin screen was the sound of corks popping, the jolly clink of glasses and the infinitesimal hiss of the fine golden stream of sherry arcing through the air to land sizzling in the glass as the
venencero
did his spectacular stuff. All the glorious sounds of wine and fiesta.

‘A nice glass of water, Michael?’ I suggested. ‘Get us in the mood …’

We sipped the clear liquid and took stock of our inner sanctum. We were right next to the kitchen, and through glass panels in the doors we could see a sort of infernal lobster quadrille as the white-clad chefs and the black-clad waiters bobbed and weaved and dipped and hurtled about amongst the jets of steam, raging fires and clashing knives.

Our fellow jurors began to drift in. First was Danny, an enormous, jolly young man with a goatee beard. He was a chef and owned a chain of restaurants on the Cádiz coast. You only had to look at him to realise that he knew his stuff
in the cookery department. Next there appeared a couple of the smoothest, snappiest-dressed young men from Sevilla. The Doctor had them down instantly as
pijos
, or toffs. They were improbably handsome, slim, tanned and exquisitely groomed, but you couldn’t hold this against them for long because they were disarmingly charming. One of them, Nicolás, was president of the Ibero-American Gastronomic Society, or some such thing, and between them, as a sort of hobby, they ran a charity for street kids in Cuba. I started to feel a little relieved that I was not to be president of this august gathering.

To make us up to the two sets of four jurors, there was a bouncy sort of a food journalist and a couple of other blokes who said they were food critics, but whose reason for being there was clearly as nebulous as Michael’s and mine. Who is
not
a food critic, after all? We all bobbed and bowed and introduced ourselves and poured one another libations of water. It has to be said, though, that things were not going down with a bang at this stage. It felt like a convention of abstainers and made you realise just what a help a bit of hooch is on these occasions. To exacerbate the awfulness of this situation, the odd
dignitary
was ushered in to shake our hands and come up with a platitude or two, and then there were the inevitable photographs of us all grinning at one another over our hateful glasses of water. Beyond the screen, of course, the merrymaking was notching fast up the scale as the beer and wine did their stuff.

And then suddenly the kitchen doors burst asunder and a slinky, black-clad waitress emerged and placed the first dish on the table. Beside it she put a number and the description of the dish, but no indication of which chef or
which restaurant. At the same time an identical dish was taken out for the delectation of the public; they couldn’t eat it – just look at it. They had the benefit of the name of the restaurant, and of course some wine. We could hear a lot of oohing and aahing as the public considered dish #1.

Dish #1 looked pretty good and it was one of ours –
cocina tradicional
. It was, according to the card, and if my memory serves me well
Parpatana de atún rojo al 10rf con couscous de frutos secos y torrija salada
. It was served on a particularly pleasing blue platter, clearly handmade by a local potter. A nice touch, I thought. We four jurors of
cocina tradicional
considered the dish earnestly. Michael and the other jurors of
cocina innovadora
came over to consider it, too, as their first dish had not arrived and they were hungry and keen as mustard to get going.

We all murmured in the way that gastronomes do as we assessed the dish for the first category on our
checklist
: appearance and presentation. The thing was art itself, exquisitely composed and conceived to gladden the heart and quicken the taste buds. I was instantly ravenous. ‘Shame about the platter,’ said Nicolás. ‘Tuna should never be served on anything but white plates. The blue makes it look grey and unappetising.’

He did not offer this as a suggestion – it was a fact.

Everybody agreed enthusiastically, though I kept my own counsel. I still liked the blue plate … but of course I could see that white might have enhanced the look of the dish a little better. There were five categories: presentation, taste and texture, ingredients, technical skill and authenticity, and five points was the maximum for each. I took up my scorecard and pen and gave it four. Actually, I figured the presentation was worth a five, but I didn’t want to look too
much of a fool. Weak and vacillating of me, I know … but if I can muster an excuse it’s that I was a little unsure as to my qualifications for inclusion on this jury. I cook a little, and enjoy good food, but I’m not the sort of chap who over the years has eaten scores of, say,
Parpatana de atún rojo al 10rf con cous-cous de frutos secos y torrija salada
, and assessed the merits of each. And, as for its authenticity … well, I gave it five; the cook knew a lot more than I did about
authenticity
. Quality of ingredients, too: I figured you’d be a fool to enter a dish in a cookery contest and use a week-old fish, second-rate ingredients, so I gave all the ingredients a five. Then at last came the moment we were all waiting for. The tasting.

The fabulous-looking
parpatana
sat on its inappropriate blue platter in the centre of the large round table. We, the jurors, stood around the table, bobbing and jostling to and fro as we considered the dish from different angles. Some were taking photos of the dish with their mobile phones. Finally, we had seen enough and it was time to demolish the exquisitely crafted composition … and eat it.

With our forks we lunged for the centre of the table and speared first a piece of
parpatana
– oh, Jeezus, it was the most heavenly thing that had ever passed my lips – then a pinch of the nutty couscous – the word ‘divine’ came to mind – and finally we cut up the savoury
torrija
toast and each conveyed a little piece to our mouths. Words started to fail me. I was ecstatic; the dish was a masterpiece. I reached for my card and gave it the maximum five points for flavour and texture. As for technical skill, well, obviously another five. It was looking good for dish #1: a four and four fives. I looked at it and felt a bit bad about the four, so I put in a little plus sign by the five for taste and texture. Perhaps I
could reassess when we reached the end. To remind me, I added a little arrow going up.

The end, though, was a long way off. We had just eaten the first dish and all my superlatives were exhausted. There remained twenty-two offerings to follow. Lord knows where things were going to go.

After Nicolás and me and the food critic and the bouncy journalist had had our fill, there was not much left on the plate. The scrapings were cleaned up by Michael’s jury, who left the plate absolutely bare. ‘Just getting into the swing of the thing,’ they said.

Then the first dish of
cocina innovadora
arrived. The very sight of it made us gasp as one:
Raviolis de ventresca de atún y puerros con esferificación natural de salicornia y aire de limón
. We all gravitated to the innovators’ table, our forks twitching apprehensively, waiting for the jury to finish their appraisal of the presentation, and after the innovative jurors had done their stuff we all fell upon those ravioli as one, licking our lips and groaning with delight. Not a stitch, nor a stain, remained on the plate. I had never eaten such food.

We all took congratulatory sips of water.

Next up, dish #3, was another conventional:
Filetitos de atún a la menier con escalibada de la huerta de Conil
. We all looked at it for a bit; it looked good. A five, I thought.

‘Hurry up,’ said Danny the Chef. ‘Our next plate is about to come.’

Once again we conventional jurors attacked the
composition
, followed eagerly and definitively by the innovators. It was incomparably delicious. Five … with a little plus sign by it. I furtively added another plus sign to the
parpatana
. As for the technique, well it was flawless: there was just enough moistness, just enough crunch – another five. Five
for ingredients: it was a fresh fish and the vegetables were excellent … And five for authenticity, obviously. Hmm … that made five fives. It was certainly good, but it was no better than the
parpatana
; and what if there were better concoctions to come? Surreptitiously I added a squiggly arrow pointing down, and then, as an aide-mémoire an R and an L, meaning ‘Reappraise Later’.

The tide of jurors,
convencionales
and
innovativos
, sloshed back to the other table to check out the next innovative offering. Each man – for we were all men – brandished his cutlery, his glass of water and his mobile telephone. This time it was that old favourite,
Tarantelo de atún braseado sobre lecho de cocochas napado con salsa suave de atún
… where
tarantelo
is the side of the tuna beneath the
lomo
and the
solomillo
, while a
lecho de cocochas
is a bed of cheeks, probably tuna cheeks in this case, all topped off with a suave sauce of tuna. Most of these terms don’t appear in the dictionary, though, so if the truth be told it was anybody’s guess.

The dish was certainly a looker, an opinion shared by most of us, judging from the gasps of amazement and admiration. The pens scribbled on the scorecards, then the forks massacred the delicate balance of the presentation and we were wreathed for a bit in critical murmurings of approbation or disdain. The edge of our ravenous appetites was slightly dulled by this time and it was more a matter of poking about and nibbling, rather than the voracious devouring that had gone before. It still tasted pretty good – straight fives in my opinion – but then so had everything.