IT’S NO SMALL BEER

Size matters when it comes to beer in Barcelona. 

In most bars you can order a small or large beer. A “pequeño cerveza” is usually anything between .25 litres to .33 litres, an unpretentious and innocuous little refresher.

A “grande” is half a litre, and is often served in some preposterously shaped glass that is supposed to enhance the “experience” of the particular blend of water, hops and fermented grain juice that you have selected.

However if you go into one of the many English and Irish bars and ask for a grande cerveza the bar staff will usually respond: “you mean a pint”, and a pint you get in a traditional British pint glass. No truck with the new fangled metric system in the theme pubs!

Generally the price of beer is reasonable. Cheap even, by taxed-out British standards.

But beware; wander down to the tourist trap bars and restaurants at the bottom end of La Rambla and the system changes. Here small means a half litre and a large is a full litre, served in the sort of glass that is usually only to be seen photographed against the bosoms of buxom wenches in Munich during October.

The price, rarely advertised in advance, is also considerably larger, pushing €13; which suddenly makes the €12 set menu (excluding drinks) a lot less value than it looks at first glance. By the time the bill comes the happy holiday makers are usually too tipsy to put up an argument.

It is a tourist rip-off that has invoked the ire of the local newspaper ‘La Vanguardia’. Not that the restaurateurs are paying attention.  

If that is a bit rich for your wallet, there is always supermarket larger at a very reasonable 25 cents a can. 

WENT TO THE APOLO

…you should have seen them go, go go.

It was one of those random tings, I picked up a CD a while back by a band called The Pepper Pots, because I liked the album cover.  The music was brilliant, sort of Motown meets Northern Soul.

For the last couple of months I have been puzzling as to where The Pepper Pots came from: Philadelphia? Camden? Detroit? Whitby?

It turns out they are from just up the road in Girona, so I popped along to the Sala Apolo in Barcelona when they were in town topping the bill for at the Soul Train Fest. Sala Apolo is a splendidly shabby music hall, and just the place of this old school soul show.

There were three bands on the bill, and what a show is was, but the night belonged to The Pepper Pots. The ten piece combo is as tight as a duck’s arse and as sharp as a Savile Row suit. They lay down the sweetest of sweet soul peppered with a dash of ska with rampant sax attacks and some beautiful guitar work all driven along by bloke with a throbbing organ. 

Out front three girl singers dispense broken hearts and the sort of sounds and show rarely seen since Diana Ross left the Supremes.

The Pepper Pots are touring the UK soon. Catch them while they are fresh – you won’t regret it.

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