Spanish Restaurant Observation

For this assignment, I visited a Spanish restaurant that also included a market. The name of the restaurant is “The Spanish Square”. It is located on 1358 W Belmont Ave in Chicago, Illinois. Although I did not eat at the restaurant I received nothing but good service from the the manager and the rest of the staff. I was urged to ask questions if I had any and they offered to provide me with any additional information that I would want to know. When I asked the manager where she was from, she told me that she is American but has lived in many states. She proceeded to tell me that the owners are from Spain and she has been working for them for many years. I would say that she was very low-context because she was straight forward with answering …show more content…
The room was lightly dimmed and there was music playing in Spanish. The overall environment felt mellow, people were laughing and talking. The room was divided into three parts, on the left was the restaurant, the right was the market, and the back part included a wine station. The market had a variety of products including cheese, beer, meat, chocolate, yams, paella rice, sardines, and many more. Everything was organized and displaced in an orderly fashion. The market was very small but they manage to provide an array of options as to what you should purchase. I noticed that there were some items that i had never seen before. One was actual traditional paella rice. It was in a large sack, which I think made it look more authentic than the bagged rice found in most places in the U.S. A second item that I found interesting was cherry vinegar called “El Majuelo: Vinagre de Jerez Reserva” because I had never seen this kind of vinaigrette before. Another interesting item was one called “Wild Lavender Honey”, which is unpasteurized and raw. It is added to desserts, cheese, yogurt, or …show more content…
One of them was a spreadable sheep’s milk cheese called “MitiCrema”. I thought this was strange but the ingredients list stood out to me. The product only contained four ingredients and they were pasteurized sheep’s milk, salt, rennet, and cheese cultures. Another item was almond butter with cacao, it was like peanut butter but it had cacao added to it. I thought that might be a fun spin on regular toast with almond butter. One other item that stood out to me was buffalo cheese called “Oriol de Mont Bru”. I found the packaging interesting because it was wrapped in a paper and tied together with palm leaves. I can see a difference in the way that these cheeses are packaged from cheese in the U.S. which is usually sealed in plastic. I decided to bring an item to class to share part of my experience with them. I chose a milk chocolate bar called “Chocolate Con Leche Artesano”. I thought it was interesting how it was wrapped in a paper-like material unlike the plastic packaging as I mentioned with their cheese products. The label says that it is made with pure milk. I enjoy eating milk chocolate and I wanted to give this one a try and that is why I chose to bring it to