Eating Out in Spain: When Lunch Needs a Medical Degree

From gluten-free tapas and vegan demands to slimming-jab diners who order everything and eat nothing, Spain’s restaurants are trying to feed a world that has never been more particular—or more complicated.

The other day, I was sitting in the most innocuous little restaurant beneath the most relentless Spanish sun, accompanied by the twins.

They are thirteen years old and already both over six feet tall. Please tell me, when did children start spending their entire infancy sleeping in grow bags?

One minute you are wiping mashed banana off their faces. The next, they are towering over you, borrowing your phone charger and quietly questioning your ability to park.

They hate being dressed alike, so naturally Abuela insists upon it.

There I was, flanked by two enormous matching teenagers who looked less like my grandchildren and more like the personal security detail for a minor European dictator.

My mini bodyguards—without the mini. The table was covered with a vast array of tapas for everyone to pick at when a well-known chef and restaurateur decided that I clearly did not have enough woes in my life. “Michel,” he said, “the hospitality industry has never had it as hard as it does today.”

I assumed he meant electricity prices, staff shortages, taxes, licences or the fact that buying six decent tomatoes now appears to require a small mortgage. No.

Apparently, one of the greatest challenges facing the modern hospitality industry is us. The customers.

Nobody Simply Orders Lunch Anymore

Nobody simply walks into a restaurant, orders something they fancy and eats it anymore.

We arrive with allergies, intolerances, preferences, principles, religious requirements, lifestyle plans, dietary apps and, increasingly, slimming injections that mean we enthusiastically order lunch but no longer possess the slightest desire to eat it.

There are allergies to nuts, citrus fruit, strawberries, shellfish, eggs, wheat, dairy and ingredients I am convinced were only invented last Tuesday.

Then come the intolerances: gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free, yeast-free, carbohydrate-free and, occasionally, completely joy-free.

By the time the chef has removed everything the customer cannot or will not eat, the meal consists of a glass of water and a nervous-looking lettuce leaf.

But only after confirming that the lettuce has never shared a chopping board, knife or meaningful relationship with a sesame seed.

Then we have vegetarians, pescatarians, vegans and flexitarians. A flexitarian, as far as I can understand, is a vegetarian until somebody walks past carrying a plate of jamón ibérico.

There are people following keto diets, paleo diets, raw-food diets and plant-based diets. There are people who will eat fish but not meat, eggs but not dairy, and chicken while continuing to insist they do not eat meat.

What exactly do they think a chicken is?

A vegetable with anxiety?

Some people will only eat ingredients that have been soaked overnight, fermented for a week and blessed beneath a full moon by someone called Luna.

Then, quite rightly, there are important cultural and religious requirements: kosher food, halal preparation, no pork, no beef, Hindu vegetarian dishes, Jain meals without root vegetables and food prepared or served around periods of fasting.

Spain has become wonderfully international, but for the poor chef standing in a kitchen the size of a downstairs cupboard, it must occasionally feel as though the United Nations has arrived for lunch without making a reservation.

Food allergies, vegan diets and slimming jabs are changing eating out in Spain. Michel Does Spain asks when ordering lunch became so complicated.

The Slimming-Jab Table

And then came the slimming injections. Restaurants are now full of customers whose eyes still order as though it is 1998, but whose stomachs have completely left the building. They study the menu with the enthusiasm of someone preparing for their final meal. They order a starter, a main course, several dishes for the table and possibly a dessert to share. T hen they eat half an olive, lick a prawn and announce that they are absolutely stuffed.

The plate returns to the kitchen looking every bit as beautiful as it did when it left.

The waiter assumes there is something wrong with the food. The chef thinks the customer hated it. The customer insists it was absolutely delicious but says they simply could not manage another bite.

Meanwhile, the restaurant owner watches an untouched sea bass being carried towards the bin and quietly reconsiders every decision they have made since leaving school. By this point, I was nearly underneath the table, crying with laughter. No. Absolutely not. Not on my parade. Every Plate Now Has an Instruction Manual Imagine trying to run a profitable restaurant in Spain today.

Food prices are rising, electricity bills require counselling and employment laws are increasingly stringent. Staff quite rightly need contracts, regulated working hours, holidays and days off.

The only thing that never gets a day off is the owner’s overdraft.

Every plate now appears to arrive with its own set of instructions.

No onion. No garlic. No salt. No oil. Dressing on the side. Sauce in a separate bowl. Chips cooked in a different fryer. Vegetables cooked but still crunchy. Fish well done but not dry. Has the salmon been near butter? Was the butter emotionally connected to a cow?

All of this must be managed inside a tiny, red-hot kitchen with barely enough room to swing the proverbial cat.

Not that you could swing the cat today. You would need a licence, a veterinary certificate, the cat’s written consent and confirmation that nobody in the dining room was allergic to fur. Tempers must reach boiling point long before the pans do. And after individually tailoring every plate, the restaurant must still make enough money to pay the wages, electricity, rent, suppliers, taxes and the gentleman who arrives every six months to inspect the fire extinguisher. It is less like running a restaurant and more like operating a small country with an unusually demanding population.

When Did We Become So Precious?

It got me thinking: when did the world become so special, so delicate and so unbelievably precious? Before anyone attacks me with a gluten-free breadstick, genuine food allergies are extremely serious. Nobody should ever be mocked, ignored or placed at risk because of a medical condition. A true allergic reaction can be frightening and potentially life-threatening, and restaurants have a responsibility to protect their customers. But there is a considerable difference between a dangerous allergy and saying, “Bread makes me feel a little heavy before Pilates.” There is also a difference between being unable to eat something and simply having decided this week that you no longer particularly fancy it. The chef needs to know which is which. “Is it an allergy?” “Yes.” “A serious allergy?” “Well, I ate it last Thursday, but I felt tired afterwards.” That is not necessarily an allergy. That may simply be Thursday. Eating Out in the Spain We First Knew Can you imagine announcing a food intolerance when many of us first arrived in Spain?

You would approach Paco at the bar in your finest Spanglish and ask:

“Perdón, Paco. ¿Tiene gluten?”

Paco would remove the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and stare at you.

Then he would shout into the kitchen: “¡Dice que no puede comer pan!”

The entire bar would fall silent. Someone would laugh. Someone else would immediately hand you more bread.

Nobody knew what gluten was. We barely knew what was inside the croquettes. The flies were lounging across the tapas as though they had reserved the best table in the house. The heat was slowly cooking the homemade mayonnaise, while cigarette ash floated over the food like Parmesan. Paco’s magnificent smoker’s cough added a delicate, almost invisible glaze to the tortilla. Nobody asked whether the eggs were free-range. We were simply grateful that they appeared to have been cooked. And somehow, we survived. Admittedly, every so often, one of us would spend a highly dramatic night becoming personally acquainted with the bathroom tiles. But that was not food poisoning. That was culture. You drank flat lemonade, blamed the prawns and returned to exactly the same bar the following Friday. There was no furious online review, no photograph of the offending calamari and no demand to speak to the manager. You simply accepted that Spain had won that round. The Spain We Fell in Love With Perhaps that was exactly why we fell in love with her. Spain did not take herself too seriously. She allowed life to live. She was loud, chaotic, smoky, affectionate, slightly dangerous and gloriously unbothered. Lunch took three hours. Children slept across two chairs pushed together. Dogs wandered beneath the tables. Somebody’s grandmother was always shouting from the kitchen. Nobody asked you to vacate your table after ninety minutes because another booking was waiting. There were very few rules. Love thy neighbour. Love thy neighbour’s dog. And occasionally love thy neighbour’s wife, should everyone be broadly agreeable. Spain was free. Today, Spain feels more complicated. There are rules about the rules, licences for the licences and appointments to arrange appointments. Restaurant menus contain more symbols than the dashboard of a modern Mercedes. Restaurants must now be nutritionists, lawyers, health-and-safety officers, cultural diplomats, psychologists and mind readers. After doing all that, they are still expected to produce perfect food from a kitchen with the dimensions of an airing cupboard—and smile politely when somebody sends back a full plate because the parsley looked “a little judgmental.” Of course, the world is safer now. We are more informed, more considerate and more respectful of individual needs. That is unquestionably a good thing. But somewhere along the way, I wonder whether we lost a little resilience, a little spontaneity and a very large helping of our sense of humour. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Take genuine allergies seriously. Respect religious and cultural beliefs. Allow people to make their own choices and never deliberately place anyone’s health at risk. But every so often, perhaps we should also accept that our chip may have brushed against an onion ring.

So there I sat beneath the brutal Spanish sun, protected by two enormous matching thirteen-year-old bodyguards, listening to a chef describe the almost impossible task of feeding the modern world. And I realised that Spain has changed. We have changed. Even the flies have probably changed. They are almost certainly gluten-free, lactose-intolerant and taking slimming injections. But Spain remains the place where we gather around a table, argue loudly, laugh until we cry and stay far longer than we ever intended.

So let us protect those with genuine allergies, respect everyone’s beliefs and make room at the table for the vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians, flexitarians and anyone else still deciding what they are this week.

But this is Spain.

The olive oil is flowing, the jamón is waiting and Paco has already put the basket on the table. En España, que coman pan. In Spain, let them eat bread. Warm, torn by hand, dipped in olive oil—and preferably served without a medical questionnaire.