Restaurant at the End of The World

I've never been too clever with fish. I'm talking about eating them here, not looking after them (my care for Mr Fishy and his friends was second to none). But eating them has always presented me with problems – I'm just not skilful enough to deal with the filleting and I nearly always end up with a mouth of bones – something that usually makes me gag with disgust. I was holidaying in Granada once and my friends and I had been wandering the streets looking for a suitable restaurant in which to eat, but for some reason most were either full or closed.

Eventually, we stumbled across what looked like someone's back yard that contained a few rough wooden tables and chairs. "This isn't a restaurant," I said, pointing to a line of grey washing that was strung across one corner of the yard. "Of course it is," my Spanish companion argued, so we sat down. Presently, a waiter emerged from the back door and approached us with a face like that of a traffic warden who has just discovered that none of the cars in his road has overstayed its ticket time. "Si?" he enquired. We asked for the menu. "We don't have a menu," he replied. We asked if we could order some food and he said yes, we could. In that case, we urged, can we see the menu?

"We don't have a menu," he repeated. Well, we asked, what could we order? "Fish," he said flatly. Fish? What kind of fish? "Fish," he said again, and asked if we would like to order some. "Is there anything else?" I asked. He replied that no, there was nothing else. Reluctantly, we ordered the fish.

About five minutes later, he reappeared carrying two three-foot wide platters, each piled high with every kind of fish you can list. A rather sulky girl followed him out with some plates and cutlery, and then an old woman with a moustache hobbled across the yard and slammed down two baskets of bread. They all disappeared back inside and closed the door. Dismayed, I looked at the dozens and dozens of differently-sized fish – some fried, some boiled; some battered, some not. Most still retained their heads and tails and it was immediately apparent that nearly all would have hung on to their bones too.

We all dived in, and very soon the table was strewn with fish remains as my travelling companions deftly recovered enough flesh from the carcasses to satisfy their hungers. Meanwhile, I was struggling with some kind of evil-looking snapper, trying to scrape off sufficient meat to make up a single forkful whilst avoiding choking myself to death on the bones. I can honestly say, it was the single worse meal I've ever eaten and I've never craved so much for a bag of chips, before or since.