Madrid, Spain

I am heading to Spain next week and need some dinner recommendations for Madrid, especially for Sunday and Monday but other days as well. Any help would be much appreciated.

Andrew

A good friend of mine grew up in Spain and is often there on business. He maintains a food blog, and some of his write-ups include Madrid. Hope these help:

Casa Lucio

Bar Santa Ana, Terraza Bar Espejo & recommends L’Albufera

Mercado de La Reina in Gran Via & La Venencia in Santa Ana

Best,

N

El Botin. And be sure to traverse through Lavapies/Barrio Latina and just wander through the tapas bars.

From my topic in the Travel area, Ian posted this.

I would add the caveat that 1) really good restaurants in Spain generally do not open until 9 PM or 21 Horas. And 2) you WILL probably need a reservation just like very good places in the US. If you manage to get in consider the roast lamb or anything with goat or kid.

Rick Steves says that Posada della Via is closed Sundays. For Casa Lucio he says “unless you’re the King or the Queen, book several days in advance – and don’t even bother on weekends, tel 913-653-252” Another good place we couldn’t get into is Café de Oriente on Plaza Oriente near the Royal Palaces. THIS one may not be an impossible reservation, and they have roast shoulder of goat which I think is probably to die for. 915-413-974, Monday through Friday.

But really it’s kind of hard to get a bad meal in Madrid. If all else fails, as it often did for us, there are great Tapas all over the place. We stayed in Victoria 4, just off Puerta del Sol (walk down Calle San Jeronimo until you can’t see the Tio Pepe sign and it’s on the right). This street is loaded with Tapas bars and we had some good paella in the restaurant right next door (Café de Levante). At the end of the street, on Jeronimo there is L’Hardy which has fantastic tiny Macarons and delicious little sandwiches. Right next to it is the Museo del Jamon which is a cultural experience, the rudest waiters are NOT in New York City. Casa Abuela down the block on Victoria has good shrimps with garlic. Madrid is a festival of food, it is really hard to go wrong.

Actually one more idea. Plaza Mayor is a very impressive square with a distressing past. If you go to Cava Baja you will probably walk through it along the way. There are competing sidewalk restaurants there and we ended up at 5J which is pronounced Cinco Jotas. It is something of a clip joint but the foie gras salad is just lovely, Louise and I split it, it has a rather large hockey puck of foie gras in the center and great enhancing ingredients all around in a big green salad. I also loved the lentil stew with venison there. It’s in the corner. Later at night a girl came out and did some Flamenco dancing, accompanied by a guitarist – there is a Flamenco night club quite nearby, can’t recall the name. We threw some coins in the guitar case.

At any rate enjoy the food and don’t worry too much about the name over the door…

F

PS here is an idea. You must have a hotel booked. Call them and ask them to book one of these places NOW. A good concierge will be able to take care of it. DO NOT WAIT until you get there!

This is a chain of the huge Osborne group opened to feature their excellent 5J hams. Hope you tried some, it is was one of the better hams I had in Spain. Rocío Osborne served some (among other things) during our meeting with her at Alimentaria 2010 - the platter of ham kept distracting me from her brief lecture.

Noel, I think we had had ham for breakfast and lunch that day.

Given the fact that some of their dishes were tapas-sized I went for variety, and we had octopus vinaigrette with creamed potatoes, something they called sheep cheeks (?) that tasted exactly like beef, the big salad, the lentils, and a couple of other things. Most everything there tasted great. While the great restaurants of Madrid feature elegant indoor dining there really is something wonderful about sitting outside in the cool of the day, sipping wine as the sky darkens, and looking around at the scenery, the street performers, and the people passing.

Thanks to all. I have been given some great suggestions.

Andrew

Andrew, buen viaje, and please report back afterward. Very curious to hear how you did.

Andrew, you went in April – where did you eat in Madrid???

Inquiring minds want to know!!

PS Andrew has 4 posts total here, I suppose he is gone. I’d like to hear about people who got to eat at the fancy Madrid places that I didn’t get to eat at.

This is from Vinoteca Barbechera, on the corner of Plaza Santa Ana:
From left, some sort of breaded clams, roast octopus with potato, and duck ham with hummus. Glorious. We also ate at El Calderon, not far from Plaza Mayor, which was Rick Steve’s goto Paella place. No pics, but it was at least half full of real Spaniards, although it was 80% Americans when we got there at 9:30.

Yum!

I have GOT to go back there…