This Is Everything You Need to Know About Eating and Drinking in Spain’s Real Tapas Capital: Logroño
I’ll forgive you if you’re thinking — where?
The nearer you get, the louder it becomes. A cacophony of noise I swear only the Spanish can make. Friends. Family. Laughter. And many uses of the word vale.
You turn the corner and there it is. Calle Laurel, Logroño’s tapas street. A 200-metre-long lane so narrow in parts you can almost touch either side.
This street is home to over 50 tiny pincho (the Basque version of tapas) bars each with its own speciality. Hundreds of people spill out onto the street, pinchos and wine in hand. People muscle their way to the bar, these well-oiled machines that churn out hundreds of the same pincho, night after night.
Despite the chaos, everyone gets served. Efficiency is king here, it’s amazing to watch.
And everyone eats and drinks very well.
This is Logroño, the capital of the Rioja wine region in north-central Spain.
It’s infuriatingly difficult to travel here (the nearest airports are Bilbao one and a half hours north and Madrid four hours south) so you hear little other than Spanish on the street. Perhaps the odd foreign accent from a pilgrim making their way…
