Txantxangorri, Tarragona

Sunday June 7

We arrived, sleepless and sticky, in Barcelona, managed to find, get tickets for, and get aboard the bus to Tarragona, and washed up in our nice hotel, the Astari, exhausted. We slept until about 6 PM, but knew there would be nothing open for dinner that early. We asked the kind man at the desk if there was a tapas place that might be open, and he pulled out a card for Txantxangorri.*
We had some doubts about a place that has cards available at hotels, but none were realized. There are about a dozen tapas/pizza/set menu places around the charming, noisy Plaza de la Font, but Txantxangorri had a chalk-scrawled list of tapas, no pizza or tourist menu.
We sat down, ordered white wine and water, and began to pick things off the list. As homage to Calvin Trillin, we had pimentos del Padrón, a whole fried green heap of them, generously salted.

Also sepia como Iñaki Aizpurua, excellent cuttlefish in thick red sauce. But the runaway favorite was ensalada de atun y bacalao - we expected the latter to be salt cod, but in fact it was not just fresh, but seemed RAW - and delicious, a sort of Catalan sashimi. A lovely splash of red pepper sauce was on top, and the whole was wonderfully refreshing.
We sat and drank and ate and people-watched for about an hour and a half. We are still amateurs at Spanish time, but we're delighted to learn.

*chan-chan-GORY approximately. Holt likes Catalán, cuz it sounds even closer to Latin than Spanish.