George Abbato, Plus3 Engineering Summer 2025
In general, I love trying new restaurants and new types of food at home. I grew up with my family working and owning a restaurant, so this was a huge part of my upbringing. Naturally, food was something I was very excited to experience in another country, and I had extremely high expectations going in.
Before going to Bilbao, I just assumed the food would be better than the US and what we have here. As I slowly had more meals in Spain, I realized that it was not necessarily better, but simply different. The types of food that they eat in Bilbao are very much based on the location, with a lot of anchovies and fresh seafood. The style of the food was usually in appetizer form as well, which were called pinxtos. While it was a new experience to eat like this, they generally were not my favorite sort of food, and just simply were not what I was used to. I still really enjoyed eating in a different style, and I am very grateful that I got to experience food in this sense.
Another way that food shaped my experience was how the meals themselves were served. As I mentioned earlier, they really use appetizers a lot. The most memorable meal experience I have was with our entire program group, at a traditional dinner. We got served about four appetizer courses before the main course, with plenty of time in between each course. At the time, it felt like we were there forever, but this was normal for this type of dinner in Spain. Looking back, it was very nice to converse at a meal in between the courses, and not be super rushed, like in the US. By the end of the meal, we had been there for three hours, as opposed to the forty five minutes or so in the US.
In addition, lunch in Spain is very long, which makes the typical day look different. It is often a two hour break, compared to the thirty minutes to an hour in the US. This breaks up the work day, but at the same time makes it stretch out longer. All of these were ways that food shaped my experience, and most of them were very unexpected.
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