Cervantes published him in 1605. Four hundred years later we opened a room on Bradford Street with the same operating principle.
The book came out in 1605 and is often called the first modern novel. Its hero is a man who read too many books about knights and decided to become one. Everyone told him the giants were windmills. He rode out anyway.
That is the whole reason the name is on the door. Not the armour, not the windmills as decoration. The stubbornness. Don Quixote is a story about doing something wholeheartedly that a sensible person would talk you out of, which is an accurate description of opening a Spanish tapas bar in a Georgia town of forty thousand people.
The painting on the ochre wall in the dining room is him, on horseback, with Sancho walking behind. The mural on the brick by the door has him too, next to a sailing ship and an octopus. Guests point at them all night, and about half know the name before they ask.
What the name is not is a theme. There is no menu written in olde script and nobody is going to bring your drink in a helmet. It is a promise about how the room is run: everything is made small so you order again, the table does not get rushed, and we tell you what is in the glass.
We have never defeated a giant. We keep riding out anyway.
