The other day I found a flyer in our doorway for a new T.G.I.Friday’s restaurant here in Madrid, located downtown on calle Virgen del los Peligros (Virgin of the Dangers Street, which is another story).

Yes, T.G.I.Friday’s, the “American Restaurant & Bar,” as it bills itself. The flyer also boasted of “nuevos dinner menus,” specifically “Traditional o Special American dinner experience.” (The flyer was an exotic mix of Spanish and English, I suppose to prove its authenticity.)

For the Traditional American dinner experience, only 9.95€, you could chose among chicken fingers with mustard and honey sauce or BBQ sauce, a bacon cheeseburger, Cobb salad, or beef sandwich.

The Special American dinner experience, 11.95€, offered a choice of great Southwest beef burrito, fire-grilled BBQ chicken tacos, Jack Daniel’s chicken, or Burger y Olé.

Burger y Olé? I wondered what that was too, so I went to the website, http://www.tgifridays.es, looked it up and snatched a photo. Grilled beef patty, manchego cheese, carmelized onion, and Spanish ham, with tomato, lettuce, pickles, and ali-oli sauce, which is garlic mayonnaise.

A Special American experience?

I’m not planning to rush out to try it, and I’m also not sure that any of those dishes would be the dinner that I would most want to represent my country. (What would be? And would it have the word “olé” in it?) I am sure that living overseas delivers endless entertainment, sometimes right to my doorstep.

— Sue Burke