Madrid Restaurant Recs, Please...

We will be spending 4 nights in Madrid in mid-October. Please share your Madrid restaurant recommendations, all styles at all price points. Many thanks in advance,

Do you like seafood?

Barry,
Yes, all kinds.

For pure seafood, emphasis on shellfish, one of my best meals ever was at La Trainera

Very expensive, but the best shellfish ever, amazing for someplace not close to the sea. Must get percebes (goose barnacles), ignore how expensive they are and get them. Also carabineros (giant shrimp).

Cervzeria Cervantes has amazingly good octopus. Half tapas bar, half restaurant. Very close is a tapas bar, Cerzeria Dolores for what I thought was fabulous anchovies and a great smoked salmon (said salmon became my daily breakfast for the following two days).


Also loved the Mercado San Miguel, although prices on the seafood was pretty high. Fantastic iberico stand, a racion of the reserve was only about 8 euros.

Check out the blog of my regular eating/drinking buddy. He grew up in Barcelona and, because of the football rivalry, something in Madrid has to be pretty good to garner any praise from him. In his food blog are the restaurants he goes to and photos of the dishes he eats at the same. Just go to his blog and search for “Madrid” (he has several from San Sebastian, Barcelona, London and around Italy as well).

Thanks, Noel. Miguel and I like many of the same restaurants. While browsing around his blog I saw an entry about the best carbonara he’s eaten. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, just scrolling, and thought back to the best carbonara I’ve eaten, which was earlier this summer at Roscioli in Rome. Sure enough, the blog post was about Roscioli, which is reason enough to go to Rome (as if there aren’t numerous other reasons to go to Rome).

Mark:

We will be there later this week; it will be fun to compare notes after our respective trips!

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew,
Hope you have a great time in Madrid. We go this coming Weds. I look forwar to reading about what you like. Best,

Where are you going after Madrid? South?? Your’re all welcome to stop by! Have a fantastic time in Spain!

Thanks, Nola, that is very generous. I’m tempted after reading of Frank’s experience last(?) year. Our 4-day Madrid visit is a weekend away (we were in Vienna last weekend, this weekend in town) during our stay in Paris, where we are renting an apartment for a month. if we don’t rent in Paris next year, perhaps I’ll seek your recommendations for a Spain driving trip next Oct. Over the past 5/6 years, we have spent four weeks in France; three driving and one in Paris. Easy to do here, as the towns/stopping points/points of interest are relatively close together and easy to organize into three week trips. Spain seems so spread out in comparison, we’ve not yet come up with an approach of how to divide and visit.

For an afternoon stop to relax near the Prado… Gonzalez wine and cheese shop on Leon. Enjoy a bottle in the back room with a cheese plate… Spanish or French!

For an absolutely incredible meal, strong recommendation for Baby Beef Rubaiyat. Great wine list, and fantastic food. They also have a seafood restaurant down stairs called Porto Rubaiyat. This isn’t a tourist restaurant. At 11PM it is packed with the beautiful people of Madrid!
They have a handful of restaurants around the world and have their own beef ranches in South America. I took my son and his friends there (they were in Spain working/studying for a year), and it was an absolute experience!

For an intimate mediterranean meal Lovaca Veronica! Try the Brim and other seafood!

Working on the dining notes and hope they are up before too much time passes… Maybe they will be of use to someone!

Cheers,
Andrew

I look forward to reading them. At the last minute, we cancelled our Madrid excursion, deciding to stay in Paris that weekend. We’ll go to Madrid soon and I’m sure your notes will be useful. Best,

Andrew I am going this week so if you post them before then they will absolutely be of use.

Juan and I will be in Madrid this Saturday as I head back to the States on Sunday if you want to meet up and have a glass of wine and a tapa.

Well, I hope I am not too late. I have not finished the notes from everywhere, but here is the close to final version of the ones from Madrid:

"Here are our comments about our recent (October 2011) dining experiences in Spain. As I have said before, but it is worth repeating, we are not professional critics, but we do eat well and think we know what is good. Feel free to take the comments below with a grain of Cadiz sea salt.

Madrid – Dinner at Casa Patas on Calle Cañizares – Well-known place with a show of Flamenco music, singing, and dance and pretty good Sangria in a dark back room, followed by our first genuine tapas experience (albondigas, pork shoulder, bellota jamon [wow, is that stuff delicious!], grilled octopus, and oxtails) at the crowded, boisterous, and friendly bar: what’s not to love? A fine start to the journey, and we would return if we desired more Flamenco.

Madrid – Lunch at Casa Salvador on Barbieri – As Anthony Bourdain indicated, this place is pure, old school, traditional perfection with ancient, smiling professional waiters happily and enthusiastically serving large Gin & Tonics (note: there seems to be an obsession in Spain with this drink) and hearty, delicious classics. Great olives and jamon to start, followed by shrimp with garlic, oxtails (order confirmed by our laughing waiter pointing to the tail on one of the bull statues in the room), perfect flan, and a great dish of arroz con leche. We would return and I’d love to try dinner there.

Madrid – Dinner at Restaurante Esteban on Cava Baja – Chosen by whim and perhaps a dash of instinct on the crowded, crazy boulevard of tapas, this was a warm, friendly, delicious evening. We stayed in the bar area up front, but watched many folks head for the dining room. Traditional tapas galore: pimientos rojos, those amazing light green olives, jamon, albondigas, chorizo, morcilla, and substantial servings of slices of suckling pig and a leg of roast baby lamb my wife saw, smiled, and pointed at while exploring the room. The house Rioja flowed and it was a wonderful meal. Before we could leave, one of the very friendly waiters insisted we wait so he could go to the freezer, pull out a mysterious bottle, and pour us short glasses of a terrific digestif, perhaps a Pacharán? We would return.

Madrid – Dinner at La Giralda on Calle Claudio Coello – One of a small local chain renowned for seafood. Our first slightly upscale dinner, meaning we actually sat down in a lovely dining room, where I believe we were the only tourists among noisy family-filled tables. Very good gazpacho; tuna, tomato and onion salad; a fine paella; and tasty but rather small lamb chops, served by a spectacularly forgetful waiter (if we did not remind him what we had ordered, we might still be sitting there waiting). It was a good meal, with lackluster service, and not one that would call us back.

Madrid – Dinner at La Barraca on Calle de la Reina – This place is famous for paella and, based on my limited knowledge of the dish, rightfully so as it certainly was a delicious meal. Reservations needed and it was packed late into the night. Excellent starters, including sautéed “wild” mushrooms, Buñuelos de Bacalao (codfish fritters), and “Madrid-style” tripe (even I enjoyed this dish and our chef traveling companion Anders opined it may have been the best he ever tasted). We ordered two different paellas – the “Valencian” with rabbit and chicken, and the “Reina de Mariscos,” which arrived covered with numerous, beautiful shellfish. This was really a very fine dinner, and we would return."


The remainder of the trip notes will follow …

Andrew

When???

Cheers!
Marshall

Funny you should ask. I actually was working on them again last night!

To revive this old thread, does anybody have some more recommendations for Madrid?

We will be there in September and looking for Restaurant recommendations, wine bars, maybe a day trip outside Madrid. I guess Rioja is too far away

We have good friends in Madrid, but they are not as wine geeky as many here…

Cheers
Christian

I just sent part of this to another Berserker in a pm who is going to Spain in a couple of weeks. I am checking on the current “in places” in Madrid & Segovia with my BIL. But here is an easy day trip from Madrid:

Whenever we have had friends from the US over we always take them to Segovia. The cuisine there is a homerun just about wherever you go. El Duque is super famous. We were there in March of last year and I am trying to remember the name of the restaurant, Juan is going to call his sister and ask the name too. We did the Segovia trip as an excursion from Madrid. During our trip to Segovia we stopped by the Escorial. It is well worth the trip and is where most or all the Spanish monarchs are buried. The Valley of the Fallen is right by there too. That is a monument that Franco built for the fallen soldiers of the civil war. After you see Segovia save time to go to Avila. Those are places you don’t want to miss. We were 7 people last March and we did the trip minus the Valley and had time to visit the cathedrals, the Castle in Segovia, the cities have lunch (Spanish style) then to Avila see the sights there and head back to Madrid. The trip to Segovia does have a mountain between, but they have a tunnel access that is great, so it should be a good drive.