Near where I live there use to be huge store specialized in selling leather to tourists. I had always found comical that they were selling leather to German and French tourists that came to the Golden Coast (La Costa Daurada, south of Barcelona, around Tarragona) to go to the beach and enjoy the mild weather and our sun. Why buying a fur coat in August? It's just too hot, dude!
Neverthless, my mother used to remind me that ours was a cheap country and these tourists, a part from the sun, were also buying our bon marche products, like those thick leather coats and jackets.
This was a well-known place, even frequented by locals (in Winter, of course), right by one of the jewels of the ancient Roman province of Tarraconensis, the Bara Arch, a triumph arch built around the I century A.D. on the Via Augusta, or at least this is what I learnt at school.
Time passed by and, aparently, tourists' tastes changed. Maybe they now prefer to buy at Lidl or Decathlon, but the point is that I entered this place a year ago and it was just a shadow of what it used to be. And as an expected decease by innanition, this placed shut down after a history of more than 40 years. Not as long as that of its venerable neighbour, but a respectable one for a tourist-oriented business.
Was it a result of the world crisis? Bollocks! It was just an outdated store with clothes that didn't interested anybody. The amazing thing is that the witness has been taken swiftly by a new breed of merchants, and a new business open recently: a wok restaurant.
These restaurants are, how to explain, a summary of what Spaniards think Asian food is, at very reasonable prices. They are a mixture of Chinese, Japanese and other undefined Asian cuisines, served galore , as in all-you-can-eat buffets. And, guys, Spanish love eating when food is cheap, no matter what.
I've got to say that food was not bad. Nevertheless, what stroke me was its name, Oki. Chinese restaurants usually have more poetic names, like Happy Whatever or
The Great Wall III. However, those representative of the latest Egyptian plague of Japo-Chino restaurants, i.e., fake Japanese restaurants managed by happy Chinese citizens, usually have Japan-related names, like Sakura or Yuki, written as it appeares in their dictionary: in latin characters and hiragana.
This one was written just like this, Oki; no hiragana. Ookii, in Japanese, means big (大きい), a meaning that really describes the restaurant, both in size and amount of food processed. Was that the idea and they just made one of those mistake Chinese make when writting? Or why repeating two letters if nobody here would care of?
In any case, I will definitely pay another visit to this place, even though it is only to see again the girl at the cashier, who convinced me with her 大きい personality and smile.
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