Diners also keep asking, "Where are you from?" When I tell them I am from Poland, they often ask what life is like there and why I am here, not back home working on a career.
The pintxos – most of which involve a bread base plus topping – are lined up on the bar so diners can take a look, give their selection to the staff, and wait for their chosen titbits to arrive.
On a recent Saturday evening, diners included Canberra arts luminaries, athletes from the Australian Institute of Sport and two nervous students on a first date, all of whom lingered well into the night.
And it lacks the Big Apple's attitude – I don't think we ate anywhere that diners at neighbouring tables didn't chat, offering restaurant advice and gossip, and even – when our taxis failed to show – lifts to our destination.
But for the other 10 months of the year, the trickle of diners who come to feast on fantastically fresh seafood reflects the general pace of life in the Alentejo: sleepy, bordering on comatose.
We had many difficult moments, such as the time a restaurant manager asked us to leave while we were in the middle of lunch because we were putting the other diners off their food.
If the interview has gone well, you will see them tucking into great slabs of fresh cream cake, their coats flung carelessly across the tables, wishing fellow diners good morning and engaging in casual conversation with all and sundry, including the Albanian waiters.
Fourteen years elapse before it is revealed that Babette is a cordon bleu cook – a fact that leads to her cooking the sisters and their guests a sumptuous once-in-a-lifetime meal, a cathartic event for her, her employers and the community, leaving the diners questioning their lifelong denial of mortal pleasures.
And now we've had to abandon the whole thing entirely because D keeps going on about how much he hates foreigners with Aids in the middle of Wimpy and we keep getting dirty looks from the other diners.
"Looking at the other diners, we seemed shabbily dressed.
Fortunately, nothing has changed about its cheesesteak, satisfying diners since '49.
