I’ve been talking about this series with people on Facebook lately, so I thought I’d share it here, too since it’s a favorite of mine. A few years ago, well known chef Mario Batali and a producer friend of his thought it would be fun to create a short series of shows about Spain—its people, its culture, and most of all, its food. Batali’s father worked for Boeing, and was transferred to the company’s operation in Spain in the mid-seventies when Batali was a teenager. While they lived and spent most of their time in Madrid, Batali’s parents took him and his siblings all over Spain so they could experience everything the country had to offer. It’s an experience that has stayed with him, and he now owns two Spanish restaurants in New York City. When the opportunity to do a show about the country he so dearly loved came about, he jumped at it. And when he found out friend Gwyneth Paltrow also had childhood experiences in Spain, he invited her along for the ride.
During her sophomore year of high school, Gwyneth Paltrow was taking Spanish while attending school in New York. An opportunity to spend a few weeks in Spain with a host family was offered to the class, and she volunteered to take part. To hear Paltrow describe her experience on this show was like reliving my own arrival in, and departure from Spain. I won’t spoil the story she tells, but it could just as easily be me telling it rather than her, only I had four years between arrival and departure whereas she only had about a month and a half.
I’ve never been a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, but learning about this part of her life and what it meant, and still means to her was eye opening. I never would have guessed that I, and everyone who attended DGF, have so much in common with her. Aside from that identification, the show is simply a joy to watch.
Joining Batali and Paltrow are Mark Bittman, New York Times food writer and cookbook author, and Spanish actress Claudia Bassols. The four of them drive all over Spain, starting in Madrid, visiting the places you’d expect like Barcelona, Valencia, Cordoba, Granada and the Alhambra, and even Mallorca. They also make several stops in small towns, some of which I’d heard of, and others I hadn’t, and end up back in Madrid to wrap up the road trip and the show with an Iron Chef competition of sorts.
Every stop offers something new to learn, whether it’s about architecture (they talk to the architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Frank Gehry), art, history, or just the culture and how it’s slightly different in every region of Spain. But the main focus is on Spanish food. Every day presents a new gastronomic adventure. While they do visit a few high end restaurants, for the most part, they eat in places similar to the ones I used to go to when I lived in Spain—tapas bars and ventas. They eat churros y chocolate, patatas bravas, paella, garlic chicken, all things I used to love to eat too.
One of my favorite things about this series is the scenery. As they’re driving from city to city, the camera pans the countryside, showing the rolling hills, the clustered stucco buildings with red tile roofs that make up so many small towns in Spain, and the gorgeous beaches and Mediterranean Sea. It makes me homesick for Spain just to watch, but I can’t resist it.
After the show wrapped, Mario Batali wrote an accompanying cookbook, Spain…A Culinary Road Trip. The great thing is, it’s not just a cookbook. It gives even more background about the show, everyone’s involvement in it, and shares behind-the-scenes stories about the making of the show. It’s the perfect complement to the show.
Even though I lived in Spain for a total of seven years—four as a kid in Rota, and then three as an adult in Madrid—I still learned things I never knew about the country. I saw a lot of things I missed the first and second time around. And it cemented my desire to return someday.
