There is a recurring scene on every tour I manage. We arrive in a city, park the van, and a band member looks at their watch. It reads 11:45 or perhaps 17:30. With a hopeful smile, they turn to me and ask, “Hey, can we go find a nice restaurant for a proper meal?” That is the moment I have to be the bearer of bad news and explain a fundamental rule of this country: in Spain, the clock on the wall does not match the clock in your stomach.
You need to forget everything you know about European schedules. We are not France, we are not Germany, and we are definitely not the UK. Here, time is elastic, but kitchen hours are strictly sacred. If you try to find a full lunch at 12:00, you will find closed doors or, at best, a coffee and a toast. In Spain, 12:00 is barely late breakfast. The real lunch window—the holy grail of the Menú del Día—opens at 13:30 and slams shut by 15:30. If you miss that window, you are entering the dangerous territory of cold sandwiches.
Then comes the “dinner drama.” I know that in many of your home countries, sitting down for dinner at 17:00 or 18:00 is standard procedure. Here, at 17:00, the restaurants are ghost towns. The kitchens are scrubbed clean and the chefs are resting. If you walk into a place asking for a steak at that hour, they will look at you like you’ve just landed from Mars. At that time, we are having a merienda (snack), not a meal.
Dinner in Spain is a nocturnal affair. The earliest you can hope for a kitchen to open is 20:00, and even that is considered “tourist time” in many cities. The locals won’t fill the tables until 21:30 or later. This actually works in favor of the rock and roll lifestyle: we eat late, we play late, and we sleep late. But it requires patience.
So, here is the golden rule for touring this country: trust your Tour Manager when I tell you to eat. If I say “we need to stop for food now” at 14:00, do not say you aren’t hungry yet. Because if you wait until 16:00, your only culinary option will be a sad, plastic-wrapped sandwich from a gas station. Adapt to the Spanish clock, and you will eat like kings; fight it, and you will starve.
