Madrid, January 2012 on Like Mam Used to Bake

Last weekend Mr. LMUTB whisked me away to Madrid for an early birthday treat.  Waking at the un-Godly hour of 3am we made our way to the airport in the bitter cold.  A cup of tea and some retail therapy in Dublin Airport and we were all set for our mini adventure.  The Ryanair staff were either not fully awake or busy with the sevorial flights they were boarding at the same time and gave us minimum attitude regards our hand luggage.  Success!  Sure it couldn’t be anything but a great trip following such a good start.

We landed in Madrid in glorious sunshine but feckin freezing temperatures.  The taxi man who brought us to our hotel was extremely friendly and chatty.  Pretty much everyone we encountered over there was really friendly and super helpful.  Having not eaten for a couple of hours Mr. LMUTB was “STARVIN” and suggested we head to Museo de Jamon for a quick bit and a coffee.  Having studied extensively at Del Boy’s Linguistic School he speaks several languages and set about ordering.  Speaking very loudly in English, but with a Spanish accent he pointed at some sandwiches and then ordered “dooooooos caffe on schlette”, causing much confusion.

Bellys full we headed out into the sunshine for a spot of retail therapy.  The streets were thronged with Madrilenós enjoying their weekend and the atmosphere in the city was lovely.  Having done some damage in Sephora (me) and Nike (him of course) he casually dropped into the conversation that “the match was probably on now” *cough cough*.  What with me being probably the best wife in the world I directed us to an Irish bar and sat quietly for the duration.  I’m good like that me.

Football out of the way we headed towards Mercado San Miguel.  I had read about it before but we had never visited.  The market was packed to the rafters with people sitting around enjoying tapas with beer and wine.  We literally had to push our way through the aisles and couldn’t quite make up our minds what we wanted to try first as everything looked so good.  We stumbled upon Meating Point and I remembered reading about it so we decided to give it a try.  When we took a ticket and realised there were over 40 people in the queue ahead of us we gave up.  Mr. LMUTB had spotted a nice seafood counter so we headed to that and had the most nomazing pinchos.  They were so good that we went back the next day for more!  Having sampled a few more nibbles Mr. LMUTB treated me to a box of chocolates before heading back to the hotel to get ready for yet more eating.  Wah?!  We were on our holidays.

That night we had a reservation at Entre Suspiro y Suspiro, a Mexican restaurant that we had eaten at before.  The cocktails and food in this place are really good so it is definitely worth a visit.  My Spanish is non-existent so I can’t remember the names of our dishes but everything was excellent.  I started with small tortillas topped with seafood, followed by pulled pork with guacamole and pickled purple onions (try saying that after a few mojitos).  Mr. LMUTB started with tacos stuffed with minced beef & pork, followed by pork sirloin with a mango sauce.  There were clean plates all round which speak for themselves.  We were too full for dessert so didn’t sample any.

The next morning, following a disgraceful lie on considering we were there for just 2 days, we went for a nice walk to try to find the restaurant we planned to eat in that night.  Having located it and deciding that it looked up to scratch we set off for a wander in the sunshine.  We ended up back at Mercado San Miguel as Mr. LMUTB felt short-changed that he hadn’t sampled the offerings from Meating Point.  We filled up on softest bread rolls topped with sliced beef, followed by some more seafood pinchos.  With the afternoon still young(ish) and not a lot to be doing as we were on our holidays we headed to the Glass Bar in Hotel Urban to sit for a couple of hours enjoying some bubbles and cocktails.  Each round of drinks was accompanied by complimentary chocolate tapas, absolute bliss.  Sure where would you be getting it?

That night we jumped a taxi to Le Cabrera, a really beautiful gastro bar with an even more beautiful cocktail bar downstairs.  Seats are limited in here with two choices, sit at the bar and watch the chef cook or sit at a long table in the window and watch the world go by.  As it was Sunday night the restaurant was quiet and so we grabbed two prime seats at the bar.  The chef on the night was an English guy and it was his first night being left alone front of house so he was delighted that all customers on the night spoke English.  He was very happy to chat throughout the night about the dishes he was cooking and just about life in Madrid in general.  The menu was all in Spanish so he took the time to go through each dish with us before we ordered.  We settled on some tapas size dishes of sardines in a mango vinaigrette with bread and tomatoes, patatas bravas and buecadillo and followed them with a main course of sirloin steak topped with pickled vegetables and padron peppers.  We ate every last scrap of food put in front of us that night.  Everything was beyond delicious.  I forgot to take pictures of the patatas bravas and buecadillo and I’m raging because they looked so good.  Both the food and the staff here made for a really wonderful dinner.  When we were finished we headed down to the cocktail bar and again the staff were fantastic, so friendly.  The Cuban bar man made the BEST mojitos we have ever had and explained that they are in fact called mojita.  There you go, you learn something new everyday.

The next morning we had an early start to get to the airport and while our stay was short and sweet we had an amazing trip full of wonderful food.  You can also check out a post I wrote last year on a trip to Madrid here.