Spain - On The Road Again

I've been tivo'ing Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow's food/travel show on PBS: Spain - on the Road Again and it's pretty entertaining. Concept is Mario, Gwyneth, Mark Bittman (from the NY Times), and Claudia Bassols (Spanish Actress pictured to the right) travel around Spain in a car soaking up the culture and eating some spectacular food.

What I've learned so far is:
1) Mario is a big celebrity f'er. Even Gwyneth calls him out as
he was dropped Bono's name for no reason.
2) The food on the show looked spectacular and from the looks of it; Spanish food might have some of the most clean flavors in Europe. Though I love Italian food and I believe there's purity of flavors, there's still a lot of stuff going on. A lot of the Spanish food on the show was straight up salt, pepper, olive oil, and cooked on the plancha. So amazing...of course they hit the molecular type places, but those flavors are very pure as well - just texturally different. I wish I could find a Spanish, non-tapas, non-paella restaurant in the city.
3) It's good to see that there are other weirdo's that go nuts whenever they eat tasty food. The crew (plus Michael Stype from REM) eat at the phenomenal Inopia (Adrian Ferrara's brother place) in Barcelona. The food looks ridiculous and they all look like they're about to orgasm with every bite. Great TV and affirmation that I'm not the only weirdo that freaks when I eat great food...