One of my lingering anxieties about spending a month in Seville has been dining alone. In a city where eating is so social—often done standing shoulder to shoulder at tapas bars—it can feel awkward to take a table by yourself. I’ve made a few solo reservations and eaten well enough, but unless you bring a book, there’s a lot of empty time to manage.
After visiting the Palacio de las Dueñas on Monday, I stopped for lunch at Casa Román, a well-regarded tapas bar around the corner from my apartment. It was still early, so I assumed there would be space.
There wasn’t. The place was full, with a forty-five-minute wait for a table. I said I’d stand and have a couple of tapas and a drink.
Standing at the bar turns the meal into something else entirely. From there, you see the system at work: waiters weaving past each other in the tightest spaces, plates moving swiftly from kitchen to counter, glasses washed and rehung. I couldn’t do it for an hour, much less a full shift.
I ended up directly across from the ham carver. Carving jamón ibérico is treated as a serious skill in Spain, and it was absorbing to watch him work—thin, precise slices. When the leg he was carving ran low, he began preparing a second one simultaneously.
Time passed quickly, and by the time I finished eating, I was reminded that the bar was the far more exciting vantage point. It was a front-row seat—to labor, to rhythm, to the small competencies that keep the place running. You’re briefly inside the machinery of it all.
One month in Seville 