I experienced my first taste of patatas bravas at midnight on a cool spring night in Barcelona. A rough international journey and complicated hostel bookings had primed my stomach to be thrilled by whatever I was eventually able to feed it—the same way a long night of drinking can. All things considered, I’d still never touch another French fry again if I could just eat that exact patatas bravas dish one more time.

It was 2014 and I was studying in London for a semester. My four closest friends, Marnie, Diana, Alexis, Leah, and I planned to head to Rome and Barcelona for spring break. After spending four months in the chilly, wet and—let’s be real—dreary United Kingdom, we were craving sunshine. Also, I'd been living off cereal and "take-away" Indian food, so some Mediterranean cuisine would be a more-than-welcome change.

Arriving in Barcelona was a disaster. The flight was bumpy, to say the least. My flight anxiety makes me ultra-aware of every tiny movement a plane makes, so I’m not always the best judge of what constitutes a “bumpy” flight. But even by my jet setter friends’ standards, it was a bad.

Travel Tip #1: If you don’t mind traveling via winged-school bus, the airline we chose, RyanAir, is a great option for students on a budget. However, if you prefer flying in any form of comfort, it may be worth the money to choose a different airline.

When we landed, our pre-ordered pickup van was nowhere to be found. With spotty international phone plans and even spottier Spanish skills, it took us nearly two hours to order another van. But finally, at some point way past my bedtime, we arrived at our hostel near the center of Barcelona.

After another hour of arguing over a booking mistake with the hostel’s manager—in which both sides were attempting a pathetic version of Spanglish—we were placed in a room with a man who was traveling Europe alone. He turned out to be a young and very polite (albeit clingy) Californian named Kyle, but still, we were not thrilled about the miscommunication.

So there we were; in our non-private room at the Black Swan hostel, completely empty (body and soul) and thoroughly exhausted. We introduced ourselves to Kyle and promptly kicked him out so we could all change out of our grimy airport clothes. He happily obliged. I realized that as uncomfortable we were with having to share our room with a strange man, he was probably equally uncomfortable with having to share his room with five boisterous and frustrated women. Or, you know, he was thrilled and actually intended to kill us in our beds later that night. But that was probably just my anxiety talking.

Travel Tip #2: Staying in hostels is actually really fun when you enter with an open mind (and definitely the financial savings when you're an unemployed college student). I’ve since shared rooms with strangers—men and women—and have thoroughly enjoyed the uniqueness of meeting people in such an intimate setting. Everyone’s generally polite and just wants to absorb and learn from your travel experiences. It’s a real community. Sometimes people meet in hostels and end up traveling together, or dating, or creating lifelong friendships.

“Do you guys think maybe we should invite Kyle to dinner with us?” Marnie suggested as she combed her hair.

“Must we? What if he’s a serial killer?” I replied, only half joking.

“Well I feel like we’ll find that out either way,” Diana pointed out, smirking.

I let out a breathy laugh, “West coast people are nice right? That’s their shtick? We’re the high-strung ones and they’re the nice ones?”

“Oh for sure. He probably surfs and everything,” Leah chimed in dreamily.

“You are truly the Queen of Thirst,” Diana joked. I laughed, feeling more relaxed.

So we invited California Kyle to dinner.

“Are you girls sure? I don’t want to intrude,” He replied. He was around our age, probably three or four years older, but spoke like a dad.

“Yeah, we’re sure. We’re just going to that place down the street,” I answered as I let out an enormous yawn.

He was grateful. We headed down the road to the nearest restaurant, called Scorpio.

It presented as some kind of modernized-retro American café or diner: red walls, fake wood floors, minimalist white tables, and hard plastic red chairs with matching booths. There was full bar too, with a display of snack-size chip bags atop it and a Good Humor ice cream freezer in front.

The snack display reminded me of delis and diners I’ve visited back home in New Jersey. Which, if I had been in a clearer headspace, would’ve bothered me. I'd been expecting to be fully immersed in a different culture, complete with ornate terraces, exposed brick, romantic low lighting, and maybe some Spanish art on the walls—not a tacky red-on-red diner with an identity crisis.

The front room was actually kind of deceiving, though. The hostess led us into the larger back room which was much more put-together. It had the same décor—only with gray walls instead of red—and was clearly just a regular sit-down restaurant.

“How are there so many people here? It’s almost midnight in the middle of the week,” I glanced around at the other groups of people as we sat down at our table.

Kyle, who had been in Barcelona for nearly a week, proudly responded, “Dinnertime is late here. Around 10ish.”

Marnie had come to Barcelona with her family as a kid and said that tapas were the thing she remembered the most. So when our waiter came over, we clumsily ordered a round of them for all of us to share. From what I understood, they were appetizer-sized plates that served as a meal for the whole table. Small serving sizes were something I begrudgingly became acquainted with in London. However, exhaustion and desperate hunger prevented me from fighting for the right to order my own full-sized meal.

I had some vague knowledge of the Spanish language from a few years in school and working in the kitchen at Chipotle for a summer. But Spanish isn’t the predominant language in Barcelona. They actually speak a dialect called Catalan. It’s derived from Spanish so you can still use either language to communicate with locals, but there are enough differences that even with all six of us collaborating, Kyle and Marnie were only able to translate enough words to understand we had some kind of meat (chorizo), potatoes (patatas bravas), shrimp (gambas al Ajillo) and fried fish (bacalao) coming to our table.

Kyle mentioned that it’s better to order a few plates first, try them, and then decide if you want to order more of the same kind or some new dishes.

“Sometimes you’ll see a plate being brought over to another table and decide you want to try whatever they ordered, so you don’t want to stuff yourself immediately without exhausting every possible option,” He stated. He was clearly very pleased with being able to display what he’d learned in the past week.

My first instinct would've been to order a slew of tapas that sounded good, eat too much of each, and then feel regret and jealousy when I saw a steaming plate of something new heading to another table.

I thanked Kyle for the tip.

When our food arrived, I immediately dug into the chorizo, thinking it would taste something like kielbasa or maybe breakfast sausage. It was delightfully spicy and salty, and entirely better than I was expecting. I automatically reached to grab more and then realized that stealing seconds probably wasn’t within the Tapas-Sharing Protocol. I refrained.

Next, I speared a piece of the fried fish and bravely took a huge bite. It was good, but not irresistible.

As I scanned the table for my next target, I noticed that everyone was eating with the same amount of ferocity. The tapas were going fast. It had been nearly 10 hours since our last meal, after all. 

I took a deep breath and reached over Kyle and Leah for the potatoes, apologizing as I nearly spilled the plate in Kyle’s lap.

It was by far the largest dish and even still, it was nearly empty. What was left of my manners evaporated and I scooped up the remaining four wedges, dropped them onto my plate, and shoved one in my mouth.

It was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside like a French fry. But it had a little kick of spices that I couldn’t quite put my finger on—things I had never tasted in my life. It was somehow familiar and completely foreign at the same time.

“Oh my god,” I announced, mouth full of potato.

“Which one?” Alexis asked without looking up from her shrimp.

“The potatoes,” I swallowed and stabbed another wedge.

“Yeah, those were good,” Diana chimed in.

Not just good. Satisfying mouth-feel, out-of-this-world taste, and ideal temperature: “This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” I concluded.

“Yeah, they were decent,” Leah added dryly.

I called over the waiter and ordered another plate of patatas bravas anyway.

So maybe there was nothing out of the ordinary about Scorpio. Maybe those potatoes were in a freezer in the back and then tossed into a fryer minutes before they were brought to our table. It didn’t matter. This was just one of many brain-melting meals I had in Barcelona. After this night, devoting myself to a single dish rather than getting a taste of a dozen dishes just seemed idiotic. I had been limiting myself. It was this (possibly) completely average meal in Barcelona than drove me to discover parts of my palate I didn’t know existed.

I didn’t know what awaited me for the rest of the trip. I did know that once I returned home to the U.S., plain old French fries just weren’t going to cut it anymore.