Category: Food and Coffee in Spain

Mercado de San Miguel

We blogged about the market in Barcelona which was a large central market with fresh fish, vegetables, fruit, etc. Looking for something similar, we went to the Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid:

We found something completely different. It is a tapas food court. But don’t think of the low-quality food courts in malls and airports. This stuff is top quality. You walk around and see a wide variety of delicious looking food, all available in small quantities for 2-4 euro. There are high tables, mostly stand-up, in the center. The glasses in this picture are filled with gazpacho:

Lots of beer and wine is consumed:

and “postres”:

We ate there twice. We could have eaten every meal there, there was so much variety. It was hard to decide what to have. What we did was have something that looked good and repeated that until we weren’t hungry any more.

And then we had churros dipped in thick hot chocolate:

Eating at the Rocamar

We walked out to the Hotel Racamar on the other side of the bay, up on the hill, the other three star hotel in town, very nice.

You always know a place is good when lots of locals eat there:

Okay, we were there at the ridiculously early lunch hour of 1:30 so no one else was there yet. The restaurant was amazingly good, much better than we expected, and not really that expensive. We ate there twice. We had some lovely dishes, including razor clams that were served on a rock, one of the stones they use for building the walls. Before:

After:

Dessert was a traditional dish with bread soaked in wine, with the foam that seems to come on things:

 

 

Paella and Sangria

Paella and sangria seem to be the main food and drink associated with Spain. In Barcelona, the Ramblas is probably the most touristy place in all of Spain. A big wide boulevard with cafes, stalls, human statues, etc. You walk down and every place offers paella on these signs that are all the same. You see people sitting at the cafes with large goblets of sangria.

I guess I am a bit of a tourist snob because I continue to be amazed that people would sit at a cafe along the Ramblas and order sangria and paella. You know they are going to be overpriced and of dubious quality.

We did, ourselves, order sangria at a tapas cafe in Toledo and it was pretty good actually. In another tapas bar ordered English cider. I don’t know where that places me.

In Cadaques we got some cheap sangria at a supermarket, which, by the way, are not that big in Spanish cities. A bit outside the cities they have supermarkets like we are used to. Anyway, we bought some oranges and plums and cut them up into little pieces and made sangria in our room a couple of nights and it was very nice.

We finally had some paella in the market in Madrid. We are less interested in rice dishes these days so that was an issue. We were sitting at the market and this young English couple was sitting across from us having paella and we got to talking. They said it was good so we had it the next night. It was pretty good, not great.

This English couple were very nice, we chatted a while. There were from outside London and in Madrid for four days. I think they said the round trip air fare was about 40 pounds (about $65 I think). They came for some nice weather. It was clear but pretty cold yesterday in Madrid so they were a bit disappointed.

Cadaques catch up

Post by Wynette: I know we are confusing people by jumping back and forth from place to place, out of order from how we visited them.  But, I have a few more pictures I wanted to post from Cadaques even though we are now in Madrid.

I loved these strangely pruned trees (they were all over the place):

We found a restaurant at the Hotel Rocamar named Sa Conca that we ate at twice because the food was so good.  It was a long walk to the restaurant as the hotel was on the far end of town.  This picture was taken on the walk back from the restaurant our last day in Cadaques:

And here is one dish we ate there, both visits.  Fresh peas with ham:

I eat, I sleep, I suffer

Post by Wynette: For the past year, I’ve been studying Spanish and found a great podcast/website that provides listening practice:  notesinspanish.com

It is done by a delightful young couple who live here in Madrid.  Ben is originally from England and Marina is from Madrid. In one of their conversations for listening practice they mention how people in Spain like to complain. (Charlie and I have been trying to write a song about that, maybe fitting in the word “plain” somewhere, but haven’t come up with much yet.)

When we were in Cadaques we found a little bar that served great coffee so we went there several times.  On one visit the woman behind the counter greeted us with a warm hola, took our order for dos cafe con leche, served us our coffee, then carried on her conversation with the only other person in the bar.  She was talking loudly in the small room so I was getting in some good listening practice.  I heard her say “Como, duermo, y … nada mas”.  I think she was saying, “I eat, I sleep, and nothing else.”  Then I heard her say “Yo sufro”, which means, “I suffer”.  Too bad I didn’t get many of the details.  I was thinking she might have been talking with her boss.  I hope she was just complaining and didn’t really live such a terrible life.

 

Food and coffee in Madrid

Post by Wynette: We’ve been in Madrid for 3 days.  Tomorrow we head back for the USA.  We have liked Madrid, more than we expected.  It’s a beautiful city and relatively restful, inexpensive, and easy to navigate for a big city.  Of course, we are tucked into our hotel room by 8 each night and we hear the city really comes alive at 10 or 11.  So, we are missing the main attraction: the night life (called la marcha as I have learned from Ben and Marina).

The first 2 days we were disappointed in the food here.  And, I have to take back what I said about coffee in Spain being consistently good.  We haven’t really liked the Madrid coffee very much.  It must be Catalonia that makes such good coffee.  The coffee at the place below didn’t taste very good but they sure had a cool looking coffee machine.  And all the waiters wore pink shirts:

But this morning we did find a place with good coffee, and yesterday we found a tapas market (really!) (Mercado de San Miguel) that had tapas fenomenal! (Yes, that’s a Spanish word.)  Here is Charlie trying to decide what to have for dinner:

And today we ate in an Asturian restaurant (Asturia is a province in northern Spain, so it’s like a foreign food place in Madrid) named Casa Lastra. Delicious food. Seemed like peasant food.  We had a white bean stew with sausages and ham.  I’ll dream about that one in days to come and try to make one like it but will never come close. Here is the bread and the huge helping of (fenomenal) blue cheese spread that they brought to the table before taking our order.  The only problem is that we were stuffed when we left. No, we didn’t eat all the bread and cheese.  We couldn’t finish the stew either.

I love the description of their restaurant in English on their website. (I’m pretty sure a computer program did that translation for them. Maybe Google Translate?)  I hope we go back to Madrid so we can go back to Casa Lastra several times.  Hmm, maybe we should go to Asturia someday too.

The coffee in Spain

Post by Wynette:  If you’ve read our blogs from trips to Italy you know we were always raving about the coffee. To our surprise, we like the coffee in Spain even more.  It’s been fantastic.  We always order cafe con leche (coffee with hot milk) which is pretty much like a cappuccino except the milk is not as foamy.  So it’s really like  coffee latte in the States except in a cappuccino-sized cup.  And the coffee tastes a lot better than any coffee I’ve ever had in the States. It’s rich and full bodied but never bitter or harsh.  We liked the coffee in Toledo (where we spent the first 5 days) and we find we like the coffee in Catalonia (NE Spain) even more.

A few times, when we would leave a bar, we’d tell the person behind the counter how much we liked the coffee.  Their face would light up.  They really seemed to appreciate that we told them that.

I wanted to include this picture because it’s only one of a couple we have of us together so far. The  nice woman behind the bar asked us if we’d like a picture when she saw us taking pictures of each other.  Wouldn’t you know, this happens to be an Italian coffee bar (Illy) that we stopped into while waiting for a train in Madrid, on the way to Barcelona. (You can see our suitcase handles there behind us.)