I'll admit it: When we touched down in Madrid about a week before we got to Ronda, we were…read moresomewhat intimidated by the traditional tapas culture, especially in the big city--we were in Spain for the first time--and our Spanish language skills weren't nearly good enough to muck through it. So we ended up getting taken for a bit of a ride at a handful of tapas places that seemed to cater a bit to such tourist weaknesses.
El Lechuguita is almost perfect for such tourists, because what you get here seems much more traditional, and it's the opposite of a tourist rip-off: It's an old corner bar, very modest in size and decor. I'd say it's reminiscent of what folks in the U.S. might call an "old man bar," although the demographics here are actually quite diverse, as far as I could tell. There are tourists here, because this only a block or two away from the Plaza de España, but plenty of Spaniards, too.
And it's perfectly amenable to inept Spanish speakers: El Lechuguita, instead of presenting the weak Spanish speaker and tapas-in-Spain beginner with an intimidating cultural thicket to hack through, actually has a long multi-lingual check-off menu, much like a sushi list you'd get in a U.S. sushi bar. And the prices almost seem like a joke: The vast majority of the dozens of tapas are under one euro! No, they're weren't very sizeable, but almost everything we tried was delicious. (And when you're paying so little, you wouldn't mind if a couple were clinkers, anyway.) Some items cost a bit more, like a decent-sized plate of jamón at five euro that was better than one we paid three times as much for in Madrid.
Terrific spot.
