Tapas: Spanish for "world's smallest portions"

For those of you who have never heard of them, tapas refers to any small, savory, usually Spanish dish served as a snack or as several varieties together to form a light meal. As I am usually oblivious to all things trendy, I barely registered when this manner of noshing became fashionable a little while ago. Yet last Tuesday when Chad & I were exploring the lovely Southern city of Dunedin, we decided to try some as a classy alternative to our road trip standard of PB&J. As the tapas were fairly cost effective, we ordered three types, intending to put together the aforementioned light meal. What we received was this:

For reference, note that the little serving bowls were 4 in. across at their widest point.

While clearly beautifully presented and crafted from top ingredients, THREE orders of the stuff failed to provide even the caloric intake of ONE regular appetizer. Now, I'm not stuck on loading down my stomach in the middle of the day, but the whole caboodle cost twice as much as most appetizers, and we would have had to roll ourselves to the car on an equivalent value of food from any other restaurant we would normally frequent.

*sigh* I must just be one of the masses when it comes to high fashion and fine dining. Guess I'll have to stick to more lowbrow options like Subway where I belong.