World's largest tortilla a dud, says Guinness

It seems attempts in the city of Vitoria, up in northern Spain, to enter the iconic Guinness Book of Records by cooking the world's largest tortilla have failed.

Not only did opposition groups in the city say the attempt was "ridiculous," it seems the people at Guinness Book of Records rejected the whole thing, as the tortilla was apparently not cooked correctly.

What the Guinness people said was that they didn't accept the way the tortilla (or potato omelette) was cooked in "precooked portions and assembled like a puzzle."  That is just not on and doesn't comply with the rules.

Apparently what the chefs did was to fry the potato, onion and egg mix in normal-sized tortilla pans, producing rectangular slabs of cooked omelette, which they then fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle to create one gigantic omelette.

Antxon Belakortu, representing the Basque nationalist party Bildu in the town called the whole thing "a circus," while Patxi Lazcoz, from the Basque wing of Spain’s Socialist party, said the whole endeavor was a "scam" adding that Vitoria will now be christened "the capital of the ridiculous" in the worldwide media.

Spanish news agency 20 Minutos referred to the whole thing as "tortillagate."

However, it seems the Popular Party mayor of Vitoria, Javier Maroto, said just having attempted the record was something "positive" for the city and that it was "worth the effort". The record-breaking attempt happened on August 2nd and was supervised by Spanish chef Senén González, who received a 2010 Spanish award for the best tortilla.  The omelette itself comprised a massive 1,600 kg of potatoes, 840 kgs of eggs, and 150 litres of olive oil.

The good side is that the tortilla fed a hungry crowd in the Plaza de Virgen a massive10,000 portions once it was complete.  The bad side was that González had tweeted about how happy he was after the event and will probably be really disappointed now Guinness has failed to confirm the record attempt.

The video below shows the creation of the monster tortilla (Spanish language).  You can see Guinness' point, however, as the whole thing would have needed to be cooked in that giant tortilla pan to be a true record.


Spanish language sources:

El Correo
20 Minutos
The Local (English)

Photo: 
1. Screengrab from the above video on YouTube.
2. Image of tortilla portions CC by-SA Tamorlan