The Mango Lassie

Empanada Boy and I spent the week before last traveling in Spain. We started in Madrid, from which we took day trips to Ávila and Toledo, and finished in Barcelona. Along the way, we ate food that was fantastically delicious and food that was equally disappointing. Lest you should worry, fearless readers, I captured it all on camera and will recount the most noteworthy parts in the next few posts.

We begin in Madrid where we arrived bleary-eyed on the morning of Saturday, April 24. We couldn’t check into our pensión until 1 pm, so we left our suitcases and went in search of breakfast. I studied in Madrid during my sophomore year of college, so I knew EB would get a proper introduction at a real institution like Mallorquina. Occupying one side of the plaza that surrounds the Puerta del Sol (an old entrance to the city), Mallorquina was founded in 1894. It continues to serve some of the best baked-goods and cafes con leche in the city. We walked through the crowded bar where madrileños stood eating pastries from the decadently filled glass cases, up to the second floor where suit-clad waiters serve at tables.

EB began his trip-long love affair with chocolate croissants. These were called napoletanas in Madrid, but would later be known as magdalenas in Barcelona. I ordered an ensaimada, an ethereal twist of barely sweet dough made with lard and dusted with a cloud of powdered sugar. It was a great start, and the café con leche— strong coffee brewed with an espresso machine and topped off with rich whole milk— brought back many a Spanish memory.

Our next meal didn’t occur until about 7 that evening after we had walked around for many more hours and finally stumbled back to our pensión for a nap. We were scheduled to meet my friend Isla Flotante and her boyfriend Salmorejo at a theater to see a performance of traditional Spanish dancing by the National Spanish Dance company, but we needed a snack beforehand, so we went to a bar in the posh neighborhood of Salamanca whose name I was too exhausted to remember. We had wanted to visit a tapas place called Txirimiri, but it was closed when we arrived. (As we would be reminded time and time again, the Spanish schedule doesn’t conform to any rules.)

We ordered glasses of red wine and three pinchos (like tapas), which came on toasted bread: one rubbed with tomatoes and laden with anchovies, another with garlicky mayonnaise and shrimp and a final one with tomatoes and jamón serrano, the Spanish ham we had been anticipating for weeks. All were tasty; although I am not a big fan of the whimpy little cocktail-sized shrimp that were all too prevalent in land-locked Madrid. My favorite was the anchovy and tomato combo. Spanish anchovies, and really all Spanish canned goods, are leagues above what’s commonly available in the U.S., in terms of flavor and quality of original ingredients.

After the show, which was stunning, Isla, Salmorejo, EB and I went out for a meal at La Tabernilla, a restaurant in the outlying neighborhood where the theater was located. We had una revuelta de morcilla con pasillas y piñones (blood sausage tossed with eggs, raisins and pine nuts); setas fritas (battered and fried wild mushrooms); and patatas revueltas con jamón (potatoes tossed with eggs and ham). EB and I didn’t love any of these dishes. The morcilla, usually a wonderful ingredient, was lost in the mix, as was the jamón. And the potatoes in that dish were underseasoned and mushy. To make matters worse, our biological clocks had no idea what time it was, and we were struggling to focus on our Spanish amidst the encroaching presence of sleep.

See the following post for the food we ate with Isla Flotante and Salmorejo the next day in the towns of Ávila and El Escorial.

For breakfast the morning after our outing, EB and I headed to Café Comercial, a famous old place located on the glorieta de Bilbao. I had some good memories of breakfasts eaten there as a student, but despite the excellent quality of the pan con tomate (bread spread with fresh tomato and olive oil), I will not be going back. The reason is that EB and I went into the bar where a menu was posted advertising breakfasts with coffee and pan con tomate for 2.50 euros each. But when we sat outside and ordered, the bill came to nearly 11 euros. As it turned out, the prices we had seen were only for the bar, while they got away with charging more than double for the tables outside serviced by a waiter. It’s common in Spain to have a discrepancy in price between tables and bars, but it’s not common for the discrepancy to be so wide. We had experienced what the Spaniards call “un timo,” better known as a ripoff.

Our luck did not improve at lunch, when I suggested we try the menu del día (fixed price set lunch) at El 26 de la Libertad, a restaurant in the Chueca neighborhood that I faintly remembered fondly. (I looked up El Sur, my favorite restaurant from my student days, but the restaurant at that location wasn’t open either day we checked, and there was little to suggest that it was even open at all anymore, at least at that location.) El 26 de Libertad is housed in a funkily painted building and has a small bar in the front room which bears reports of its many accolades from travel publications. After a scowling waiter kindly moved us out of the way of a direct line of cigarette fumes, we ordered a lentil stew, salmorejo (gazpacho typically from Cordoba made with almonds instead of tomatoes), pork ribs and calamari “a la romana.” Nearly everything about this meal was disappointing: the restaurant was out of salmorejo, and the cream of chicken soup we got instead could have come from a can; the ribs were poorly cooked and were doused in a too-sweet barbecue sauce; the calamari came in limp fried rings that might just have been defrosted. Only the lentils were passable, and even they were underseasoned.

Our Madrid dining experience was not going as well as I had hoped. I had forgotten so much about where the best places were, and many of the ones I remembered were no longer there. There was also not enough time to devote to finding the best food when we had so much to see in such a small window of time.

Still, we were determined to do better that night. We went to a popular tapas strip in the La Latina neighborhood and got a table at Taberna Tempranillo, a wine bar almost exclusively devoted to Spanish bottles. I ordered a lovely fragrant albariño, and EB got a glass of “Les Terrasses” a well-regarded wine from the Priorat region by Alvaro Palacios. A glass of it would surely have cost $12 in a New York wine bar, but here a small glass went for 3.50 euros. For tapas, we ordered a platter of delicious spicy chorizo and two montaditos— toasted bread topped with other ingredients. We selected one spread with tomato and lined with delicious Spanish tuna called ventresca and other piled with cured duck “ham” and roasted zucchini. Both were excellent, and we felt our spirits begin to revive.

But EB still hadn’t gotten a good taste of jamón serrano, so we continued down the street looking for a platter of the good stuff we could afford. A man standing next to a leg of ham outside a restaurant called Toma Jamón convinced us to stop by offering us a free sample of some freshly sliced pieces. The place had a sort of cheesy, chain-like atmosphere, but they were offering a half portion of ham for 7.50 euros, much less than anything we’d seen. We stood at the bar and ate our delicious platter of ham with massive slices of pan con tomate and cañas (small glasses of beer). Even if this was a chain, it was better than almost any American chain I’ve been to.

See my later post about our day trip to Toledo and the food we ate there.

It was late when we got home from Toledo the next day, but EB wanted to try a bocadillo, a sandwich made with one or two ingredients on a baguette. There are almost never condiments of any kind: no mustard; no mayonnaise. EB had his eye set on a particular place, another Madrid institution called El Brillante. A sparkling, mirrored palace of a restaurant near the Atocha train station, El Brillante serves the widest range of bocadillos of any place around. It’s staffed by a surly bunch of seasoned behind-the-counter waiters and frequented by madrileños of all ages and occupations.

El Brillante is supposedly famous for its bocadillo de calamares, but after the poor limp fried calamari rings we had at 26 de Libertad, I wasn’t going to risk it. Morcilla was EB’s filling of choice, and we chowed down on the sandwich together, each eating half. It was juicy, salty and delicious. EB still felt hungry, so he topped it off with a mini bocadillo of tasty jamón.

We spent the next day visiting the Prado and needed a quick nearby respite for our lunch break. The Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid’s largest park, was the natural choice. We went to one of the restaurants overlooking the park’s main lake and watched people rowing boats as we ate bocadillos made with jamón and chorizo. We also had ice cream from the Nestlé cooler, offering EB the opportunity he had long been awaiting: the chance to try the Maxibon, the latest trend in dessert. This was half ice cream sandwich, half chocolate coated ice cream bar and came in a variety of flavors. I didn’t care for the cookie part, but EB declared it awesome.

We met up with Isla and Salmorejo again that evening and visited, the Templo Debod, an Egyptian temple that was gifted to the Spaniards and rebuilt in the Parque del Oeste. After touring the temple and enjoying some sodas in the park, we went in search of some dinner in the very tony surrounding neighborhood of Rosales.

After finding too many places that were obviously beyond our price range, we decided to eat at an Argentinian steakhouse of sorts called La Vaca Argentina— not exactly my top choice for my last night in Madrid, but the food was pretty tasty. It also tasted remarkably Spanish for being Argentinian. Case in point: The grilled chorizo we ate before our steak. We also had a delicious salad with avocado, tomato and hearts of palm and a juicy sliced steak, which arrived raw so we could grill it ourselves on the hot ridged pan on our table. All went nicely with a robust Ribera del Duero.

When we finished the meal, we said goodbye to Isla Flotante and Salmorejo and told them one last time how much we wanted them to come visit New York. Then we got our bags from our hostel, bid adios to Madrid and headed to the bus station to catch the overnight bus to Barcelona. We had eaten well in Madrid, but we had high hopes for the fresh seafood, cava and baked goods of Catalunya.

La Mallorquina
Puerta del Sol, 8; Mayor, 2
28013 Madrid, España
91 521 12 01

La Tabernilla
Plaza de Ribadeo, 1
28029 Madrid, España
91 730 77 11

Café Comercial
Glorieta de Bilbao, 7
28004 Madrid, España
91 521 56 55

El 26 de la Libertad
Calle Libertad, 26
28004 Madrid, España
91 522 25 22

Taberna Tempranillo
Calle Cava Baja, 38
28005 Madrid, España
91 364 15 32‎

Toma Jamón
Calle Cava Baja, 10
28005 Madrid, España

El Brillante
Plaza del Emperador Carlos V, 8
28012 Madrid, España
91 539 28 06‎

La Vaca Argentina
Paseo del Pintor Rosales, 52
28002 Madrid, España
91 559 66 05