Our hotel was just a bit north of the La Latina district of Madrid, which apparently is a more culturally-mixed area (read: more immigrants). This, of course, means that there's a ton of food to be had, and the area is known for its plentitude of restaurants, both tapas/pinxtos and full out ones (word to the wise: if you order a drink without ordering food right away, most places will give you a free tapas dish to nosh on until you order). On our walk there, we passed by a confectionary with basically a huge window box full of potato chips they were making on site - always a good sign of the destination ahead.One major street for eats is Calle de la Cava Baja, which is lined with restaurant after restaurant for a good stretch. Of course, it being Spain, most of these restaurants were closed during our mid-afternoon stroll: as much as some may say that the siesta is disappearing as a norm, there's more than enough places that observe it to prove them wrong. There were way more places closed for siesta in Madrid than in Barcelona, but given the much hotter temperatures in Madrid, it's not hard to understand.
For the life of me, I can't remember the name of the place we went to and didn't write it down, probably a result of sunstroke and sheer forgetfulness. But we did find a cute little place next to La Camarilla, one of the well-known tapas places in Madrid (we didn't go sheerly because we didn't know). This was a small little wine bar, with the owners busy watering the plants in the restaurant as we walked in. A little cupboard shrine had odd memorabilia that we figured were family keepsakes. It was kinda more like eating in someone's living room, which was fine by us.
As with most places, the daily menu on the chalkboard featured just as many (if not more) choices than the permanent menu, and we chose a few raciones - basically appetizer dishes for 2 or 3. Given our immense love of all things starch and cheese, we got this cheese toast with grapes. It should be no surprise that it came, of course, with olive oil drizzled on top, y'know, cause it needed it.
You can't be in Spain and not eat at least one sausage, and I ain't saying that in a euphemism-sense. This was an amazing chorizo or similar type sausage, drowned in oil, and served with enough bread to sop all of the goodness up.
I was also super curious about squid served in its own ink. As common as it is, I'd never had it before, and had kinda built it up in my head. This didn't quite live up to it, mostly because the sauce was thickened to the point of being a syrup, and kinda had this sweet/starch thing going that just seemed bland. With that said, it came with rice cooked in milk, which was by some of the best rice I've ever had (and, trust me: I've had a lot of rice in my life), so much so that I had to take a picture of it.To be honest, I didn't think of the place as being much other than a good afternoon break out of the sun. I could probably characterize the majority of the places we went to in Madrid like that. Apart from a few highlights, I'll probably remember the city more of its museums and the posh Salamanca district than for its eats.
El Mollete, though, was one of these highlights. The place was only two streets over from our hotel, and yet the concierge hadn't heard of it. The ol' World Wide Web, however, had: it had made the NY Times' "36 Hours in Madrid" list as one of the places to go to:"Don’t head to El Mollete without a reservation. The restaurant, set in an old charcoal cellar, has space only for 26 diners and is always full (Calle de la Bola, 4; 34-91-547-7820). Put yourself in the hands of the owner, Tomás Blanco, and hope he will serve you mollete (fried bread in oil), Gorgonzola croquettes, artichokes and scallops, and, of course, huevos rotos. No credit cards."
Other reviews I'd read basically agreed that the place lived up to the hype. It is a tiny, tiny restaurant, and the earliest dinner reservation (they're open for breakfast too) one can get is 9pm...not that anyone actually eats dinner that early in Madrid. With the after-opera crowd, it is next to impossible to get in unless you show up way later or have the patience to line up. There's a few larger tables on the top floor, maybe two small ones on the bottom, but basically you're sitting on stools or its standing room only.
We didn't order the mollete as they either ran out or only serve it during breakfast - not that I didn't pout about it for a split sec. We never went for breakfast either - our hotel had free breakfast - but apparently El Mollete is known across the city for having one of the best tortillas around. We couldn't read the menu or the daily chalkboard, but did as the NY Times suggested and let the owner/manager pick for us. The dude is as charming and down to earth as it comes: the staff is basically just him serving tables, a bartender, and (I'm assuming) one lady we saw come out of the kitchen. One picture of Francis Ford Coppola adorns the wall, and that's it. There's no fuss or muss here: it's about the food.
The crappy thing, then, is that our photos just don't do it justice. The place is dimly lit and small, and we didn't want our camera flash to annoy everyone. Don't hold our crappy pictures make your mind up for you. Particularly when it comes to this Galician octopus dish, which is quite simply one of the two best octopus dishes I have ever had (the other being at Cibo in Vancouver). The octopus sits in a lake of olive oil with potatoes, paprika sprinkled on top. The octopus was cooked to perfection, tender, juicy and brilliantly flavored with just enough saltiness to contrast the natural sweetness of the potato. The immense quantity of olive oil might put some off, but when you're using olive oil of this quality, you can learn to love it.
El Mollete is apparently known for eggs, so we had the huevos rotos too. Huevos rotos is kind of a broken egg (scrambled isn't quite right, but it's in that vein), cooked with potato. It might just sound like your standard eggs/hashbrowns breakfast combo, but there's something that just differentiates it. It's either the paprika or immense quantity of olive oil (a constant theme), but it's just different. And great. I love breakfast enough to think that eggs should appear on the menu at all times of the day, and the people in Madrid tend to agree. It's hard not to when it tastes as good as this.
The last dish we had was a grilled pork chop. I had picked up the Spanish word "lomo" earlier in the day, mostly because of my fondness for a Spanish pork chop sandwich. I'm not even 100% sure that "lomo" translates to "grilled pork" in Spanish, but heck, people understand. I'm also not sure what it is about every other country and their relative expertise with pork, but we have a pretty steep learning curve ahead of us here in Canada/US (I'd say North America, but a carnitas or el pastor taco are evidence that the Mexicans get it). Anyway, this was perfectly grilled, nice and salty, and a perfect end to the meal. I really loved El Mollete, which was certainly the best mom and pop/traditional place we went to in Spain. I'd almost advise people to go there first, and work your way down to La Latinas if necessary. There's just alot of labour and love that goes into El Mollete, and it shows, both in the service and in the food.
One of these places is Casa Ciriaco, which has been around long enough to witness an attempted assassination of King Alfonso XIII in 1906, and forms part of the setting for Valle-Inclan's novel Luces de Bohemia. We figured its longevity must have been well founded, and had read that it tended to be the least touristy of the grand dames of the old restaurant scene, being a bit further from Plaza Mayor and the Huertas district, both tourist centres. The place looks its age, an old neighbourhood restaurant that's been in need of an upgrade for awhile, long enough so that it would be a shame to do so now. Pictures of famed bullfighters, the royal mum, and other celebs from yesteryear decorate the walls, with the servers having probably worked there longer than I've been alive.
One was an egg drop soup with bits of bread in it, which had an interesting mix of salty and a hint of sour to it, seasoned with healthy amounts of oil to make the medicine go down. It was good, but definitely far too much for one person to be able to finish it in one sitting.
The other dish was artichokes, which were cooked, tossed in olive oil, and topped with bits of jamon. Again, a good dish, but something one would have to share lest you get sick of it.
Without a digital SLR or good lighting, most of our food pictures are underlit and kinda look yellow. These pictures, though, pretty much capture what the dishes looked like. We both ordered chicken (in hindsight, I should've ordered the tripe): one roast, one stewed. I can remember the roast chicken being cooked perfectly, and the stewed chicken in one of the thickest gravies I've ever ingested. Beyond that, there wasn't too much more to make it memorable, but one can definitely see how the restaurant would be a Sunday family dinner fave.
We ended with a traditional Spanish flan or creme caramel. I don't think I've ever had a bad creme caramel, but this one seemed extra good, rich and caramel-y.
As museums go, the Guggenheim Bilbao is pretty incredible. The place is something to behold from inch to inch: the Gehry building, the artwork outside (including this Koons flower pup), the artwork inside... it's really overwhelming, and a good example of how an institution that makes that large of an artistic statement will eventually mould a city's identity.
When it comes to Basque cuisine, most will tell you to make the drive from Bilbao to San Sebastian, which has more Michelin stars per capita than any other place on earth (for example, one of the fathers of new Spanish cuisine, Arzak, hails from San Sebastian). But when Food & Wine magazine calls Josean Martínez Alija, the chef at the Restaurante Guggenheim, "Europe's most thrilling young chef," you know you gotsta check it out.
We both ordered the tasting menu, which we try to do in order to really get a sense of where the chef is coming from. This started with a chilled cranberry juice or tea, spiced lightly with cinnamon, which was just sweet enough to have flavour, but just neutral enough to serve as a palate cleanser. At the same time, the server put a huge aspirin pill in front of us, and poured a touch of water on top. After a minute, the pill grew into a wet napkin (the picture shows it just after the water was poured on it). If this was the opening act, we were anticipating some really crazy shit to go down next.
As an amuse bouche, we were served a small piece of bread that had been infused with herb oil (can't remember which herb). When I say infused, I don't mean that it was merely soaking in herb oil: this bread tasted as though it had been completely made out of herb oil, but with nary a drop appearing on the plate. And yet, at the same time, the bread wasn't soggy at all, but light and chewy instead.
Alija is known for emphasizing on local, with the menu spotlighting certain 'slow food' dishes. This white asparagus dish exemplified this: the white asparagus is lightly grilled, eaten with your hands, and accompanied by a juniper and chevril 'gel' dipping sauce, which really helped to heighten the natural flavor of the asparagus without over-complicating the mix of flavours.
The next dish played on the same theme, but took it to a whole other level. The menu listed it as "roasted aubergine flavoured with 'makil goxo', based on a yogurt emulsion* 'Farga' olive, a thousand years [sic] old olive tree)." As far as I can tell, this was an amazingly slow braised eggplant, cooked to the point of ridiculous tenderness but without having the eggplant fall apart, with a licorice flavoured glaze, and plated like a painting with the yogurt emulsion on the side, which helped to balance the strong licorice taste.
The crazy flavors were toned down for the next course, which worked well as a bridge to the meat courses coming up. I could just describe it as a roast avocado in a squid broth, but the menu listing does it alot more justice: "vegetarian foie. (avocado), with a juice of baby squid, acidulated and coriandered." If you've never done yourself the favour of putting an avocado on the grill, do it: it brings out an incredible butteriness and sweetness to an avocado that can't be beat. You almost can't go back to having it raw, and it works well in guacamole too. This avocado was lightly salted, but the squid broth really took it somewhere else, adding an immense richness to the dish that made it something quite special.
A fish course came next: steamed hake resting on a wild garlic and caper sauce, with a touch of lemon and herb. Hake can often be quite dry, but this came out as moist as a halibut.
My meat course was "Thoughts of lamb grilled over a fire of dried vine cuttings, on a base of Tolosa beans and hints of hot spice." Or, in other words, lamb brains. For the most part, brains taste alot like sweetbreads (which are other glands), but these seemed to be even softer and mushier. In other words, they're certainly not for the squeamish, and the light foam in the sauce probably ain't gonna help either. I do remember this being quite amazing, but I probably remember it more as the time I ate brains. 
My lovely companion, quite understandably, wanted to sub in another option. Instead of brains, she had a course of Iberian pork. I can't remember what this was served with, but take note of the colour: this pork was served medium rare. Again, not for the squeamish, but the rareness of the pork did help to keep the natural taste of this dish intact, and made it quite a rich, wonderful thing (well, the one piece I tried, anyway).
As a pre-dessert course, we had slices of pear with hazelnut, poached in a "Garmillas" cheese "serum" (whatever that is) with elder flower. This was a good touch of sweetness to bring us to dessert, but without being a diabetic, syrupy nightmare than many poached pears end up being. Nice, delicate and light. 
The dessert continued on the licorice theme from the eggplant course, with a licorice ice cream, black olive ashes, and a "casein" of aromatic herbs. The casein is an amazingly rich cream, which was pretty necessary considering how strong licorice can be. I remember this dessert as being mostly about those two flavors, and don't remember much about the black olive ashes.
If there's one thing I love about getting a tasting menu, it's the free stuff that you're often served as well. Post dessert is an amazing thing that can bring tears to my eyes. This was either a berry-flavored mousse or a pannacotta of some sort, with a nice little Pocky-style breadstick thing topped with pistachio. By this point, we were full to the point of obscenity (considering this was a late lunch), so I can't say too much about it.
For the most part, our trip pretty much went as such, given the short amount of time we had, but Bilbao ended up being one of my favorite points of our whole trip. The city's picturesque, an old port town that, when in need of an upgrade, went to the ends of the spectrum and became an architecture wet dream. When your city's main tourist feature is the Guggenheim, that has its effects, and the city seemed like the perfect mix of quaint and modern.
Case in point: the picture above is a good overview of what central Bilbao looks like. A grand river flowing through, with downtown and the Guggenheim on one side and the more historic part of the city on the other, with one of the main bridges designed by Calatrava (who also did the airport, one of the prettiest I've ever been in) and the other framed by the museum. Smattered around the city were these tile pieces by famed French graffiti artist 
One of these restaurants is 
For that added touch of familiarity, the 'decor' at Victor Montes worked wonderfully. Generally, the whole place is lined with aged wines and spirits of all kinds; this picture is only one small fraction of the whole place. The only area of wall space that didn't have shelves of bottles had legs of jamon hanging against them.
We stumbled into Victor Montes early in the morning, which in Spain is about 11am. The main bartender/manager was busy slicing jamon for the day, but gave us a warm invite and asked us to help ourselves to a slice of tortilla, a Spanish omelette. Instead of the Spanish omelette you might find in diners here (ie an omelette with peppers), the tortilla is more of a deep dish affair, with layers of potatoes baked in egg. I ate a lot of these in Spain (thanks, hotels with free breakfast!), but this one was the best: seasoned perfectly, with just the right amount of savory playing against the natural sweetness of a good egg, and topped with a slice of jamon. 
Later that night, we tried out other tapas (or pintxos, as they're referred to in Basque) places, including Wallpaper's pick Irrintzi (just okay). Most Basque places simply leave them lining the bar: grab what you want, and they count the toothpicks stuck in each tapa afterwards. This system works fantastic, because it basically felt like a glutton's dream come true - an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord with little guilt involved. Afterawhile, we found ourselves back at Victor Montes. For starters, we really just wanted to go to a great bar, and this place was an easy pick. In most places, when you order a glass of wine, your choices are basically just red, white or rose if you don't speak any Spanish. Our fave bartender was kind enough to give us different pours of wines from Rioja, explaining each one despite the place being packed to the gills. Also, based on the tortilla, we figured they would have great classic tapas.
We weren't wrong: Victor Montes had some of the best classic tapas we had in Spain. We had every combination of small bun/croissant, jamon, baby eel, cheese, sardine, anchovy, crab, egg, you could think of. My fave was the one that looks like a sunny side egg in the picture; instead, it was cheese with a fig paste and bits of jamon sprinkled on top, playing on the egg appearance. If the tapas aren't enough, there's a full restaurant as well, and an offshoot deli/wine store located at the other end of the square.
Barceloneta is basically the port and beach part of Barcelona. The port side is a hop, skip and jump from Born, and features a big mall, a museum, and, uh, boats. The beach side has a W hotel under construction that looks like it could easily have been in Dubai, clubs that line one end of the beach, and the Gehry fish.
The contemporary architect that gets bagged on most seems to be Gehry. Fair enough, but he's payin' the bills, which is more than most people can say. Dude took this fish to 
As you'd expect, then, the whole area features high with seafood joints, and that inevitably means paella. The one tricky thing about finding a good paella in Barcelona is every single place has one, mostly to draw in the tourists. There's a lot of crappy paellas: it's common to find a paella with exactly two shrimp, two mussels, two clams, two blah blah blah...you get the idea. It takes the soul out of it, and a good paella is a pretty soulful thing. Can Ros was recommended on a few different lists (including Paella Prof). It's located on a quiet side street that takes you from the port side to the beach side, and it feels more like being in a small beach town than in a bustling world city.
With a paella on the way, we didn't order too much else. But, in keeping with habit, we ordered the tomato bread. It wasn't much to rave about, and the picture shows it all: two slices of good bread, two tomatoes, and a jar of 
I also had to get the razor clams, cause I just can't get enough of them. I've never had razor clams this fat and meaty, and that's not even an inappropriate pun. Apparently a lesser family of razor clams are 
What I can say about the paella is that it indeed was THE BEST PAELLA I HAVE EVER HAD. I've tried to make paella at home, thought I did an okay job, but I'm going to toss our pan out now. The rice was perfect: flavorful, with just the right amount of saltiness and acidity, soft but still slightly chewy. The rice's importance in a paella cannot be overstated: fuck it up and you've ruined the whole thing. Make it amazing, and you serve it in the heaping portions you see here.
Can Ros has a lot of other seafood features on the menu, many of them non-paella. If I were that Japanese hot dog eating champ, I would've ordered the whole frigging menu. Instead, I had to take a picture of what the table across from us ordered, which was a seafood feast. I took this picture after they had already taken a few items to their plate: when it originally came out, it was probably closer to a 7 inch high seafood bounty of everything one can find underwater. Another table ordered a fish baked in sea salt. It might take an unhealthy amount of gluttony and envy to be eating the best paella ever and still crave every other dish around you in the whole restaurant, but I defy you to not feel the same way. It ain't weakness, it's instinct. After Can Ros, I can only imagine how amazing Valencia must be - now that we're home, I'm trying my damnedest not to think about it.
Our favorite of these places, hands down, was Bubo. Bubo is the brainchild of Carles Mampel, who had once been at the famed Espai Sucre. Bubo is tucked behind the Santa Maria del Mar, along a boulevard lined with tapas joints, a cooking school and other boutiques.
When you enter Bubo, it's automatically clear that you are in a dessert shop operating at a completely different level than most. The fact that you can sip on champagne with your sweets doesn't hurt, either. Presentation is key: these gellies, which look alot like coloured sugar cubes, were just one minor assortment of sweets that gave the place a great technicolour appeal.
Other corners featured chocolates with hints of curry, chocolate lollipops, and so on.
We ordered two desserts, each amazingly intricate to the point where I can no longer remember all of the details. The one on the left had a mandarin orange layer with green tea caviar on top, and the red cherry looking orb on top of the one on the right was not a maraschino, but instead a molecular gastronomy type orb with a dark cherry liquid inside. Lesson learned: carry a notepad at all times, because all I can remember clearly was being in candyland heaven.
If Bubo (proper) re-conceptualizes dessert, than Bubo Bar tries to do the same thing with traditional tapas fare. For instance, the usual tomato bread that we always ordered came out as amazing bread sticks with a tomato mousse of sorts. As with all places in Spain, this version of the tomato bread also reminded us of the virtues of a good olive oil, and not to spare on its use.
We also had croquettes, which I remember being a bit different but great, though the picture we took turned out like crap. That was followed by jamon/cheese finger sandwiches with fig paste, which were again a good re-interpretation of the classic jamon tapa sandwiches we ate at more conventional Basque-fare tapas bars.
This was a bocconcini-type cheese/tomato salad nestled on top of pastry. The tomato was slightly roasted. I don't remember alot about this, mostly because we were in anticipation for the next dish.
If there's one type of seafood that I remember most fondly from Spain, it's the squid/octopus. Perfectly cooked octopus is a force to be reckoned with: juicy and tender, instead of bland and rubbery. This was a take on Galician octopus, which is usually served with a host of potatoes and swimming in olive oil, with sprinkles of paprika on top. This didn't have as much olive oil excess as other places, which was a pleasant change.
You see egg dishes alot more prevalently in Madrid, where a traditional fave is the huevos rotos, basically fried eggs mixed up with a host of potatoes. Here they had a fried egg nestled on top of a hollandaise/gravy type sauce, and it wasn't until you dug into the bottom that you realized it was resting on a bed of potatoes.
The one thing to forewarn about is that Bubo Bar has a smaller dessert choice than Bubo, mostly because they bring over what hasn't sold in that day from Bubo, which is usually very little. This was a chocolate-raspberry mousse. I remember the sticks being raspberry flavored as well.
The other dessert we had was a chocolate affair, which the website describes as a "guanaja sponge cake, guanaja cream, guanaja chocolate mousse, and guanaja chocolate crunch." I'm still not quite sure what guanaja is, but I remember this being a layer of chocolate mousse on top of a denser peanut butter cake of some sort, all resting on top of a crunchy layer.
And with a small mom n' pop place that only serves hot chocolate and churros, Born is a neighbourhood I can get behind.