Your Compañero SMOOSHED it!!!!

Our very last night in Sevilla obviously left us very anxious to have the last bite of our favorite dish that the city had to offer.  I barely hesitated before I decided that the tastiest morsel was the Pork Cheeks from Bar Europa that we had the first night we were here.

Bar Europa is right on the corner of the street that we live on, so we see the Waiter around all the time.  And somehow it's always the same guy, whether we're going to lunch around noon, or out drinking at 11pm at night.  Naturally, we always greet him, and by now, at the close of a month, I've begun to believe that we've built up quite a nice little rapport with our daily Holas and Qué Tals.

However, as soon as we were seated, I started to realize that this same Waiter was barely giving us any attention.  We sat there twiddling our thumbs for a really long time before he would even come over to give us a menu, even though I had tried to flag his attention whenever he was serving the tables close to ours.

I managed to brush this all to the side, thinking that he was just extremely busy and probably grumpy from being overworked.  That's why when he was taking our order, I said in my best Spanglish, "Your Pork Cheeks are la mejor en Sevilla!!" Big smile.
He gave a half snort and twitched his cheek before hurrying me on with giving the rest of our order.

Despite the waiter's brusque manner, I was still really excited about our food.  Scrambled eggs with various ingredients, or Revultas, were somewhat of a specialty in Sevilla because I kept seeing it crop up in tapas menus, but somehow, it had never occurred to us to actually order one until tonight.  Plus, the Waiter had given us the suggestion to order Plato Del Dia instead of what we had originally picked out because it just happened to be a scrambled that day of eggs with asparagus and cod.  Or at least, that's what I thought had happened....

Our first dish was literally served to us while he was in a trot.  He didn't even slow down when he slipped some baked egg plant lasagna-esque dish on our table with a "It's Very Good," and dashed off again before we even knew what happened.  Naturally, we have all ordered dishes in Spanish which have come out totally different to our expectations so I was only a little confused at not having ordered anything with egg-plant in it.  We immediately dug in, completely ravenous.

Next, he came clasping two scrambled egg dishes and now, to my amazement, proceeded to unload both and trotted off again, apparently not hearing my half mumble of "Hey! We only ordered ONE!" with my mouth full and my arms waving.  That's when I started to realize that perhaps we had not ordered the first dish either.

Very soon, there was no room left on our table for the dishes that we actually did order, and that's when a slow rumbling rage started building up in my no longer rumbling tummy.

When I finally managed to get the man over to our table, I told him indignantly that we clearly only ordered one scrambled dish - substituting the one he had suggested instead of the one that I first ordered.  However, all he said was, "No, I said 'Dish of the Day is good', and you said, I will take that!" and immediately walked off again.  Things were getting ugly -- you don't wanna push Lucia too far.

Seeing as it was our last night, Marco convinced me to just take the uneaten food to go for the morning.  So when another waiter (not the grumpy one) came out to give us the check, I told him I'd take everything uneaten to go -- all of this in Spanish.  But even though he repeated what I said with complete comprehension, his hands did not cooperate and he proceeded to stack one plate on top of the other, so that all the food was completely ruined.

That's when my fuse blew.  I flatly told the waiter that we weren't paying for the dish that we didn't order, and when the mean Waiter came over, I looked at him squarely in the eye and said,
"FIRST. You gave us an extra dish that we didn't order so we had too much food, SECOND, when I asked for that para llevar, your... Compañero SMOOSHED IT!!!!" I accompanied this with loud smooooshing gestures with my hands and glared at him as fiercely I could.  Marco loooooved all of this and replayed my performance to me many a time since.  I didn't care - moral victory for me was a thousand times greater than the price of the dish we got refunded.

Don't under-estimate Lucia!!!