A little bit of America...

5 February 2012

As I've mentioned before, one of the oddest aspects of living on the coast of Spain is that there is such a noticeable English-speaking influence. Granted, this is not true everywhere in Spain. But there have been a few occasions in which I could almost forget that I'm in Spain.

I've already written about some of these places--starting with Benidorm. The city of Benidorm (you can read about my visit here) has a small British ghetto. A couple weeks ago, I visited Jávea--which has several British supermarkets. The coast is well-known for being the place where British expats go to retire.

It is, however, much less common to see American places--probably because fewer Americans come to Alicante.

So when the opportunity arose to eat at an American-themed restaurant, I knew that I had to check it out--just to see how American culture (and food) would be interpreted.

Peggy Sue's is a 50s themed American restaurant. There are actually several located all over Spain. They have the typical green and pink decor from a 50s diner along with jukeboxes at each table (except ours).

It was nice to see American condiments on the table. Here it's much more common to  just see olive oil and vinegar. 

The restaurant serves anything stereotypically American--hamburgers, chicken fingers, pink lemonade, milkshakes, cinnamon rolls, brownies, etc.

We ended up ordering chicken fingers--mostly because we had read that the burgers were terrible. I've heard that Spanish burgers aren't the same as they are in the US. You can't get real 100% beef. Burgers are usually a combination of beef and pork--so they don't taste the way they should (or we think they should).

The chicken fingers actually weren't as bad as you might expect. They were actually made of real chicken--which isn't always true in the US. However, the chicken was cut into such small pieces it ended up being mostly fried parts instead of chicken.

At this point in the meal, my friend and were giving the restaurant pretty terrible ratings. The decor received a 7 or 8 (out of 10) since it was pretty faithful to what a 50s diner should be. However, the food was getting a 3. I made fried chicken in my apartment in December and I assure you that it was better than what was served to us. Lastly, the service was mediocre so we gave it a 5. My friend asked them if they could make a milkshake out of one of the ice creams that they offer as a dessert, and they said that they couldn't. I understand that they might not know what to charge her for it since it's not on the menu. However, I've worked at an ice cream shop for 3 summers so I know that it would have been super easy to make.

Nevertheless, what really redeemed this place was the dessert. Cherry Mania ice cream! Most places in Alicante serve gelato instead of ice cream so it was nice to get the flavor of real ice cream.

The Verdict: this place isn't some place to go to eat, but it might be nice for a merienda or snack. They had a number of options for dessert/snack that looked like it would be good--such as cinnamon rolls, brownies, cheesecake, the ice cream, etc...