El Arrabal

Backpacking on no shoestrings

Food

Service

Atmosphere

"Uno mas de sangria!" we shout at our lovely waitress... and it has to be said, those jugs are BIG... !!
In fact, those jugs are worth every peso. Big overflowing pitchers of rich ember coloured wine, spilling with fresh cut peaches, mm-mmmmm!!! 
Everything here is rich, the honey coloured atmosphere, the saporous ooze of tango music, the burble of thickly overlaid Spanish conversations (OK a few American accents as well) Speaking of rich, the customers must be too; you'd have to be to afford the premium “ensada" steaks. 
As thrifty backpackers we merrily down our communal jugs. 
And watch as dessert concoctions winged with toffee sculpted lace are carried past us to neighbouring tables of fat (walleted) Americans. 
We watch the slow intoxicating tango, strike up conversation with a fellow next to us... who turns out to be the owner... who turns out to be of the generous sort... and noticing our somewhat out-of-place, utterly shoestring-less thongs, shouts us the sum of all those sangrias. 
I toast our benefactor: "this, amigo, is a night to remember." 
Alas, dear sangria, the next morning we didn't, exactly.