Chocolate Soja

We wanted what every traveler wants: to shed the dorky veneer of American-ness and dissolve easily, like sugar in coffee, into the city. We had ducked out of the rain into Mesón del Café, a century-old coffeeshop hidden within the narrow, winding streets of Barcelona’s Barri Gòtic.

After an afternoon of shopping success—for Anna, an FC Barcelona shirt for her boyfriend; for Molly, a bottle of absinthe—we deserved a less touristy treat. And there on the menu it was.

“Chocolate soja.” It sounded muy español. It sounded sexy. It sounded good. What was soja? A word that our practical Spanish classes had never bothered to cover. But one of the lessons one quickly learns in Spain is that unfamiliar words often yield tasty results. So we ordered dos chocolates sojas, and then plopped down at a rickety table, primly pleased with our authenticity—“How terribly continental we are!”

Seven minutes of self-congratulation later, the chocolate soja arrived. We’d already experienced the joy of the café cortado, a shot of espresso cut with a small amount of milk, and that of Cola Cao, a Nesquik-like chocolate powder added to hot milk. But this? We wanted to bathe in this.

It was hot chocolate like we’d never tasted before. Our consumption of our drinks was only interrupted by exclamations of delight. Whatever it was, it was thick and rich, but somehow decidedly not-chocolatey. Our bellies and our sense of superiority satisfied, we soldiered on to the Sagrada Familia.

Later that night, we did what everyone does on a trip abroad: surf the Internet. We remembered the unknown word from earlier and quickly Google Translated that mother. Turns out we weren’t as cultured as we thought. Soja means...soy. We were nothing better than the needy, vegan Americans we scorned, too concerned with their own dietary restrictions to enjoy an authentic Spanish chocolate.