Gazpacho, Seville-Style, to Sip in Summer

SEVILLE, Spain — Asking around for the best gazpacho recipe in Seville is like asking around for the best smoothie recipe in Los Angeles.

There is no recipe. If you live there, you already know how to make it. It’s just a question of figuring out how you like it.

To accomplish that, I ate gazpacho literally every time it was offered on a recent swing through Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain. (Seville is the capital.) It is even sold in containers at the airport, packaged like coconut water.

In Andalusia, gazpacho is more drink than food: something to sip when heat and hunger strike at the same time. From June to August, midday temperatures soar above 100 degrees nearly every day; it is simply too hot to eat. But when I was craving cold, craving salt and craving lunch all at the same time, gazpacho was there.

It is constantly available: in home kitchens, refrigerated in glass pitchers; in restaurants, served with a couple of ice cubes in chilled earthenware tumblers before every meal; at tapas bars, bubbling away in countertop cooling machines the same way that hot-dog joints in the States keep the lemonade dispenser on display.