food

Eat, drink, be Madrid

~ mjparman ~ 1 Comment

The kebab place near my friend Oda’s old apartment is this BOMB shwarma place. Hands down my favourite we came across, and we ate at A LOT of kebab places (you’ll notice pretty quickly they’re everywhere). This place was my group’s favourite because their spicy sauce was ACTUALLY spicy. For me and my fellow Texan in the group this was, taste-wise, a little trip home!! Woooo. However, we can’t for the life of us remember the name, but its in Malasaña! On one of the streets off Fuencarral. If you find the little shop that is literally just a room with vending machines (selling some pretty questionable items) it’s up the street, on the same side of the street as that little place. (I know my directions on this blog are bullshit, I’m sorry I am not even trying to make them better.)

El Infinito a coffee place a short jaunt from the Anton Martin metro stop, a rather local place where they don’t really give a damn if you’re served in a timely or convenient manner whatsoever, especially if they sense you’re American. Really, that’s the glory of it. They have a little section of books that you can take one/leave one, which isn’t revolutionary but I like very much. Their Irish coffee is stout and delicious.

La Bicicleta was a regular haunt for my friends and I in Madrid. We got coffee here all the time, occasionally a glass of wine, and studied, OR on a night where we were out a little early for Madrid, we’d have mojitos here. The staff deals with a lot of ex pats because its in the really trendy Malasaña neighbourhood, so they’re nice enough, wink.
Somewhere in the very close vicinity is a bodega that sells American style deodorant, which got a lot of business one tipsy evening from a group of very enthused Americans abroad.

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**My favourite bar in the city closed, so here is the part of this post where I ask you all to mourn with me**

Also, there seems to be a lot of trivia nights held as a sort of intercambio opportunity in bars across the city. This is brilliant, and I love it. If you are in town for a while, or want to rub elbows with locals while beating the shit out of them with your stupidly unnecessary knowledge of international currency, its fun.
I’d say go for a bar in La Latina, but that’s just because I’m partial to that neighbourhood and it seemed like some very interesting expats frequented the bars there.

El Mercado de San Miguel

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What you need to eat when you go to El Mercado de San Miguel a mecca of tapas in Madrid.

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Its touristy, but the kind of tourist attraction locals still go to, so you know its good. Probably my fave bigger tapas market in the city, but I hear a lot of dissenting opinions. My explanations of where the stands are is going to be… awful, but this is how my mind works, so maybe my directions will gel with your though processes, too.

I’d suggest getting the octopus on crackers. The stand it’s at is adjacent from a place that has its own mini kitchen, very near the main entrance door of the market. Next door to the octopi on cracker THAT TASTES LIKE SWEET FISH BUTTER is a wine place. I hope you can find that, it is so worth it.
Seriously, the octopus tastes like butter, but with a slightly fish taste. Think of what salmon tastes like, and think butter with that flavor. It is incredibly soft in texture and the cracker its on is also very soft and melts in your mouth. This is one of the yummiest things I ate in Spain.

There are little sausages that have a name related to flutes (which I of course can’t recall now, see here: walkingontravels.com), they come in a black paper cone. The stall that sells them is near to the main door on the long side of the structure. These are one of the most expensive things I got at the mercado, so if you’re on a tight budget, maybe skip these.

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One place only sells paella, it’s just down a bit from the place that sells the sausage in black paper cones. It is facing the glass walls of the mercado. The counter’s backdrop, if you can call it that– the wall behind the counter– is red and has info about what region each of the paellas it sells are from. I HIGHLY recommend the black paella. It’s made with squid ink, and if I remember correctly, is native to Valencia. The taste is strongly salty, but with an almost lime-like after taste. I had many bowls of this over the time of my stay in Madrid.

ALSO, the place with their own mini kitchen (adjacent from the octopus place) sells great Patatas Bravas for when you’ve had a rough day. Patatas Bravas reminds me of a spicier version of fries and ketchup my mom would home make me when I was a kid, so they were a good stand in as some sort of comfort food. After one especially grueling grammar test I chowed down on a plate with a friend and drank copious amounts of yummy vermut, which you should also get a glass or two of.

The Mercado de San Miguel is also where I met two really hilarious British guys who were in Madrid for a few hours on their way to Texas, so sometimes speaking English in public in Spain isn’t such a bad thing!!

Missing Home

~ mjparman ~ Leave a comment

I am not one to miss home.
Or even really people.
I am probably a little too good at stepping away from things and not thinking about them until they’re right in front of my face again.
That having been said, I miss weird things from home in little bursts sometimes.
For instance, in my time in Madrid I missed: pancakes, driving, open land, Mexican food, and little kids (I used to be a nanny– this isn’t weird, promise).

This post is about pancakes.
I know, that is weird.
I can’t explain to you why I missed IHOP and not my mom,
but I did.

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(photo from Yelp 😄)

VIPS, my friends, is the easy answer I found.
It is, really, just like your local IHOP, but with a wall-size screen you can watch Fernando Torres score volleys on WHILE eating pancakes. They even have special seasonal flavours just like your favourite place to stumble in drunk or over-tired at 2am.

My favourite VIPS is at the Quevedo metro stop, across the street. Actually, some of my favourite little parts of the city can be found from Quevedo, but that’s another post.
There is also another VIPS on Gran Via somewhere in between Cibeles and the intersection with Calle Montera. This VIPS is quite a bit more narrow, and can get kind of awkwardly tight when its busy (and since its not a Spanish bar or tapas place, but rather a VERY Americanized riff on a diner, its neither charming nor fun).

So if you’re like me and miss weird, random shit like pancakes, there you have it: VIPS.

If anyone knows of a better pancakes place in Madrid, PLEASE I BEG OF THEE TELL ME!! This will be important information to have.