Memories from holidays in Spain
I have remembered some unforgettable experiences Iād like to share with you! Some years ago, when holidaying in Spain for the summer, we stumbled upon some very interesting places. We stayed for a few days at a small sea-side town, where people usually go to enjoy the beaches, the sun and the nightlife. It was a famous destination for young people that wanted to enjoy affordable holidays with excellent facilities. While the town seemed quiet and relaxed during the day, at night it was exactly the opposite. By the time the sun went down, it would become over-crowded with young tourists, that would party all night, getting drunk and high. My girlfriend and I would go out partying two-three times, but for the rest of our stay we preferred spending our nights at exquisite restaurants, where we could enjoy eating our favourite meat. In the town there were three very famous restaurants that served male meat exclusively. The men served were of excellent quality, thus the prices were extraordinarily high.
We had a pair of feet for a ridiculously high amount of money, but in the end it was worth it. The feet were harvested from a 22-year-old Spanish guy that was being prepared for this for many years. His dream was to become a professional football player, and he had a contract with a team when he was still a teenager. When signing a contract with a sports team, you basically consent to being owned by the team. If you succeed as a player, you continue your career and it becomes your profession. But if your performance is inadequate, your team will receive compensation for the effort they put into training you, by selling you to a man farm. So you either make it or you end up becoming meat. This specific man did not manage to impress with his performance. By the time he turned 18, he was transferred to one of the best man farms in Spain. His coach saw his potential as meat when he saw him in the changing rooms. Apart from realising how meaty his body was, he had also seen how smooth and meaty his feet were. He recommended extra care for the guyās feet during his stay at the farm. And he was right about it, as he was finally chosen by one of the best restaurants in the country, mainly because of his feet.
The feet were harvested and cooked in front of us. Every table had its own guillotine, grill and stew pots. Our chef brought the boy to us and placed him on the other end of the table. His feet were still in shoes. Itās a tactic of the restaurant to marinate the menās feet in espadrilles, which gives it a unique Spanish touch. They are certain that this type of shoe is excellent for transferring flavours and spices to the foot flesh. The feet are marinated for about a week in the espadrilles, and after that they are ready to be cooked. The restaurant also sells espadrilles to any customers that would like to use this marinating process for a boy at home.
Our chef took the espadrilles off the boy, and revealed the delicious moist feet that had retained a yellowish colour from the saffron and the other spices. The smell was divine even though the show had not even started yet. The main trick for this result was to keep the shoes on him for a whole week, allowing the foot meat to sweat and absorb all of the flavour of all the herbs and spices. The feet are not supposed to be touched or washed after the shoes are worn. The chef was careful not to touch the feet at all once they were exposed. The boy was tied up and gagged, and in his eyes you could see his intense sadness. It must be quite hard to accept that the most important body parts you needed for your dream career, have instead become the reason youāll be eaten.Ā
His smooth feet looked oily and fresh as he wiggled his toes. When the chef grabbed his legs, he knew this was the end. His ankles were placed on the guillotine, and his legs were secured on the table. His back was placed on the vertical wooden surface, and his torso and arms were secured on that too. Behind his head there was a sharp blade which seemed ready to slice his neck off. As the chef moved his hand towards the handle of the blade above his ankles, the boy closed his eyes and his whole body became tense. It was as terrifying for him as it was entertaining for us and the chef. The chef asked us to push the button in front of us when we ād like to end the boyās suffering. He counted to three and he pulled down the leaver. The two feet were chopped by the blade and they fell on the hot grill below them. We could immediately hear the soles sizzling on the grill, and the smell of foot meat and spices filled the room. The boy screamed through his gag, and he kicked his bleeding legs. The guillotine was moved higher on his legs, with the blade now placed on top of his knees. The chef counted to three, and chopped his calves off. The screams through the gag became even louder, and his eyes were ready to pop out. We decided to finally put him out of his misery, and we pushed the button. The boy was beheaded automatically by the blade, and then the chef removed the gag and placed the head inside the stew pot in front of us. He chopped some vegetables, and added them in the pot. By the end of the cooking session, the boyās calves were carved into tasty grilled steaks, and his foot skin became crispy and brown on all sides. The aroma of the feet was more intense than ever. The boyās head was also delicious, with the meat falling off the skull. The rest of his body was taken back to the kitchen, where it would be turned into other dishes.
It was one of the best grilled pairs of feet weāve ever had. Needless to say, we bought some pairs of espadrilles to use on other menās feet. But even though this experience was so unique, it was quite similar to other experiences weāve had in expensive restaurants in Spain and elsewhere. Ā
What really surprised us was an unexpected eatery we stumbled upon, when we were looking for lunch options on a Sunday. We had enjoyed a morning at the beach, and we were looking for simple food options, like seafood, paella, pork or chicken dishes. While strolling around the town, we realised there was a smell that felt quite familiar. It smelled just like roasted man meat. The kind of smell you get when there is a spit-roast party going on. But it was 10 times more intense, which meant loads of guys were being roasted. We thought there might have been a spit-roast party going on at the beach, but we were at the beach the whole morning and there was nothing like that.
We let our nostrils guide the way, and we ended up in an area of the town which seemed quitter and less touristy. We finally found where the smell was coming from. It was a rotisserie⦠Yes, like the ones that sell rotisserie chicken. But we could see no chickens being roasted. The whole restaurant window was filled with spit roasted men on display. There were at least 5 rows of men on spits, with 10 men on each row. And there were additional rotisserie ovens with smaller body parts being roasted, such as heads, feet, hands, ribs and calves. We had never seen such a place before. There were more than 50 men being simultaneously roasted, some of them bronzer than others, while some were just recently placed on the spit.
It wasnāt just shocking to see so many guys being cooked at the same time, but also the fact that the restaurant inside was crowded, and the queues in the street were huge. At least 100 people were seated inside the diner, enjoying the freshly roasted man meat. Another 20 people or so were waiting at the door. And the weirdest thing of all was how long the take away queue was. It was at least 100 metres long, and people were just ordering pieces of roasted men to take home. There were also a couple of delivery men collecting orders.
The majority of the customers appeared to be locals, or at least Spanish. Only a few tourists were around, and we were two of them. We were intrigued, but also curious about the place. We definitely had to try it. I approached the entrance to check the prices, and I couldnāt believe my eyes. I had never seen male meat being so affordable. It was almost at the same price as pork or chicken. A pair of roasted feet with potatoes only costed 20 to 25 euros, a calve was around 15 euros, a head 20 euros and a whole man would only cost around 100 to 150 euros. At first we thought there was something dodgy going on. We thought that maybe it was an illegal establishment, or that the roasted guys were of really bad quality. But it didnāt seem like it, as all of them looked excellent, and the restaurant looked legit. We tried asking some people for more information, but not many could speak English. Finally, we decided to join the queue and next to us we found a local that was fluent in English and was happy to answer some of our questions as we were waiting.
He was a man in his 40s, who lived in a nearby town with his family. He told us that it is kind of a tradition to eat rotisserie meat with potatoes on Sundays. He was a frequent customer at this particular rotisserie, and his family loved the meat from there. This time he came to eat in by himself, as his wife and children headed to the big city for the day. We asked if he knew how come there are so many men being roasted, and why the prices were so low. He informed us that the rotisserie only operates on Sundays, and there are at least 100 men that are served every week. The majority of the men were in reality young tourists that got in trouble. During the summer months, the restaurant is overloaded with meat because of the thousands of tourists that visit. Many of them were British, but also a lot of them are German, Russian, French, Dutch, Italian and of course Spanish. He said that the locals demand to be respected by the tourists, and if the tourists donāt comply with the rules, they end up arrested and possibly eaten. For example, after partying all night, a lot of guys do drugs or go off the rails. They break things, vandalise monuments, pee in the streets, shout, harass people and many other offenses. After a specific time of the night, if a young man breaks the rules he will most probably be arrested and taken to the police station. Their parents or loved ones will be informed that they have been arrested, and that by the morning theyāll be considered as meat animals. Once they get arrested for specific offenses in this town, there is not much they can do about it. No lawyer or government can save them. They are transferred to the local farm, which is only 20 minutes away. There they are prepared and examined by professionals, and when you are deemed ready, they are sold to restaurateurs of the neighbouring towns. Thatās how this rotisserie receives the majority of its meat. There are also other man farms around the region that follow similar procedures, and the rotisserie owners make sure to buy a variety of men every week. The prices are very low because these men are usually prepared to be eaten in less than a week. Of course they undergo health and sanitary checks and they are perfectly suitable for consumption. Another reason for the low prices is the efficiency of having one single cooking method for all the meat. No need for exquisite recipes, ingredients and pioneering ideas. Traditional spit-roasting techniques guarantee excellent meat quality, and delicious flavour.
While waiting to be seated, we could see the display area with all the men rotating. We could even recognise some of those guys. Two of them were a British couple that was staying at our hotel. We had seen them around the swimming pool area. It was quite impressive that we could still recognise them while they were impaled and roasted to a crisp. We were considering ordering their feet, but another customer had already ordered them for take away. We saw the waiters pausing the rotation, and chopping all four feet, placing them in take away boxes. How come we had never seen anything like this before? Feet like those would have costed a fortune at any other restaurant. But the person that ordered them only paid 40 euros.
As we were approaching the time we would be seated, we saw another boy we recognised. It was a German guy that was sitting behind us with his girlfriend at the beach some days beforehand. We had even commented on his feet being ridiculously meaty, when we saw him sunbathing. His girlfriend was in front of us in the queue, holding hands with another guy who looked Spanish. The German guy was naked and tied up, and the waiters dragged him to the spit-roasting machine where he would be impaled. The girlfriend waved at the boy from outside, and she sent him kisses, as the spit entered his ass. She laughed and joked about it with her new boyfriend and then by the time the German boy was rotating in the oven, she stopped giving him any attention. She said to her new boyfriend that sheād love to have the head and genitals of her ex, and he decided to have a calf and a pec.
This was what we needed to hear. His meaty feet were all ours. After waiting for another 20 minutes, the number of men on the spits reduced significantly. There were only about 15 men left, but the queue behind us was still huge. Inside the restaurant, most cages were empty, apart from 4-5 cages in which a dozen men were still waiting for their fate. The German guy was relatively golden now, and his feet looked perfectly glazed. It was unlikely that anyone would get to them before us. And to our own surprise, the head of one of the British guys we had recognised, was still rotating next to the remains of his boyfriend.
We finally sat down after an hour of waiting. First thing we did was to order the feet of the German guy, with potatoes as a side. We also ordered some of his ribs, and also the head of the British guy, which looked very appetising. We paid 60 euros in total, and had a meal like no other. The quantity was unparalleled to anything else we ate, and the quality was impressively good. The meat of the German boy was very tender and juicy, he was probably around his mid 20s. The foot meat was comparable to the one you would have at a Michelin restaurant. He had excellent arches, and his toes were big and meaty. I especially liked the crunchiness of his heel, and the crispy skin of his tops. His ribs had so much meat on them, and also the perfect amount of fat. The head of the British guy was cut in half by the cooks, as we wanted to share it. His cheek meat was very tender, and the whole skin was roasted to perfection. Much better than having a roast chicken. We were very lucky to have found that place. We visited again the last Sunday we were there, and we were not disappointed. That time we ordered more feet from various guys, and all of them were superb. Thereās nothing like sunburnt tourist meat being spit-roasted on a Sunday.