Is the gilda the cause or the effect of Australia’s latest culinary trend? The OG San Sebastián pintxo – a toothpick-skewered ménage à trois of guindilla pepper, olive and anchovy – is not only the snack of the summer but heralds the new Spanish wave cresting on our shores.
Lennox Hastie’s Sydney bar Gildas pays homage to the skewered snack. “It’s what the Spanish do so well, taking a small palette of ingredients but making them sing.”
The gilda is inescapable (Sydney is littered with examples, including at Newtown’s Continental Delicatessen, Potts Point’s Parlar and Coogee’s Una Más).
But carbon dating the Spanish conquest of Antipodean palates requires a step further back in time.
MoVida and its editor who wrote that tapas was South American in origin.
