Menu prices in Madrid will take your breath away, especially in the joints that cater to tourists. A sit-down dinner in a typical restaurant often runs $100 for two, without alcohol. One way to beat the cost of eating out is to patronize a taberna.

Tabernas are a kind of bar and they usually serve tapas (snacks), important for sustaining blood sugar levels in a country that doesn't eat dinner until 10-11 PM. I get weak with hunger well before restaurants open in the evening. Tapas bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, and we often eat them instead of dinner.

Tapa means "cover" in the sense of, say, a lid for a pot. There's lots of great theories as to why the Spanish call hors d'oeuvres "lids", none of which are likely to be true. Nevertheless: In the past, tapas consisted of a slice of ham or cheese, sometimes on a slice of bread, that was placed on top of a glass of wine. Some say this was to keep wind-blown dust and grit from falling into the drink. Another explanation is that the tapa prevented the smell of sour wine from reaching the drinker's nostrils. Yet another is that a law was passed requiring food to be included in the price of a drink in an effort to reduce public drunkenness, the theory being that food would reduce the impact of the alcohol.

I can attest that this strategy has not worked.

Tapas come in varieties limited only by the imagination of the tabernero. Simplest is a plate of those wonderful nutty green olives. Then there's all kinds of stuff on slices of bread: anchovies, acorn-fed ham, choriço (salami-like sausage), shrimp, aged manchego cheese with conserva de membrillo (quince paste), among many others. One of my favorites is pincho de tortilla, a wedge of something like a potato-and-egg frittata. To make a meal out of tapas, we sometimes asked for raciones—tapas still, but larger servings. I like the smaller servings, so I can taste more different varieties at a single sitting. In that way, they work like sushi.

Traditional tabernas have wooden fronts, noteworthy in this country full of stucco and stone. The wood is painted, often red, or is varnished.

Their most interesting external feature is tilework, as seen here on the Taberna Tirso de Molina, named for a 17th-century dramatist. Of course, having expropriated his name, the taberna was obliged to include his portrait on the façade.

Unaccountably, Taberna Tirso de Molina devotes the remainder of its extensive tile murals to the spirit of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Other tilework is devoted more to advertising than to bellas artes, but is no less compelling for that. Here's an image from a beer ad.

She looks like a dreamy Maxfield Parrish subject.

Another taberna illustrates 19th-century winemaking; shown here is wine being transferred from fermenting tanks to barrels for aging.

A Santa Clara Valley ultra-premium winemaker I know uses a cast iron pump just like the one above. Claims it doesn't "bruise" the wine like electric ones do.

La Taberna Encantada uses a tile mural for a nameplate...

... and to create an innocent image. Not open when I went by, I couldn't check to see if the place was in fact enchanted. I'm guessing it's dark and full of cigarette smoke, like all the rest of them.

You can fill a day, enjoying the artwork decorating these places. Many are concentrated between the Lavapies area and the Puerto del Sol. It's a kind of outdoor museum, with the advantage over the Prado that the exhibits will feed you.