A taste of Madrid Some people visit Madrid for its world-class galleries and museums. however, falls madly in love with a sandwich.
Siobhan Downes,
Some visitors are enchanted by Madrid’s world-class galleries and museums, boasting masterpieces from the likes of Goya, Velazquez, and Salvador Dali. Others adore the city’s rich tapestry of architecture; lavish palaces, elegant baroque churches and grand squares.
I, however, have fallen madly in love with a sandwich.
I’m sitting in the Plaza Mayor, the famous square in the heart of Madrid, which is fighting hard for my attention with its imposing spires and magnificent statues. But I only have eyes for my bocadillo de calamares ,a long, crusty bread roll stuffed with deep-fried calamari.
The heavenly sandwich cost less than $4 from La Ideal, a hole-in-thewall tucked behind one of the plaza’s touristy restaurants. The narrow bar is crammed with customers, so the busty woman at the counter hands me my bocadillo in a paper bag. I take it outside, losing a few golden squid rings to the cobblestones as I make an ungraceful attempt to wrap my jaws around it. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
The next day, while polishing off my second bocadillo, I find out Madrid is home to the world’s second-largest fish market, after Tokyo – despite being miles from the coast. In fact, the land-locked capital has been famous for its top quality seafood for centuries.
Madrid’s Catholic gentry had to eat fish on Fridays, so every week, the very best seafood from Spain’s fishing ports would be rushed to the centre of the country. Peasants got the leftover squid scraps, which they fried up and served on bread. To this day, the humble calamari sandwich remains one of the city’s most popular snacks.
I’m learning all of this on a Devour Madrid food tour, along with a couple from India, a solo female traveller from the United States, and two Cathay Pacific pilots enjoying their day off.
Our guide, Sanne, hails from the Netherlands. With a background in art history, she previously lived in Rome, where she led art tours. She had grand plans to meet and marry a handsome Italian man, she tells us. Instead, she nabbed herself a Spaniard, and ended up in Madrid.
The tour kicks off at 10.30am, and Sanne leads our motley crew from the Plaza Mayor to our first stop – breakfast at a nearby bakery called Confiteria El Riojano, founded in 1855 by Queen Isabel II’s former pastry chef.
The queen was so supportive of his venture that she bought the shop for him, hiring the best interior designers in the land to decorate it. It’s so elaborately furnished it looks more like a museum than a bakery – but you can still enjoy the shop’s fit-for-a-queen pastries, dunked unceremoniously in a cup of warm liquid chocolate.
As we slurp our chocolate and try not to splatter our shirts, Sanne explains how Spaniards typically nibble their way through five meals a day. For breakfast, they’ll have something sweet, like coffee and churros.
This is followed by a second breakfast a few hours later – ‘‘just like hobbits’’, says Sanne. This time, they’ll go for something savoury, like toast with olive oil and tomato.
Lunch is around 2pm, and is considered the most important meal of the day. Most restaurants offer a fixed price, three-course lunch called the menu del dia (menu of the day), usually with wine included.
By 7pm, it’s about time for an The busty woman at the counter hands me my bocadillo in a paper bag. I take it outside, losing a few golden squid rings to the cobblestones as I make an ungraceful attempt to wrap my jaws around it. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth. aperitivo – an alcoholic beverage to ‘‘open up’’ the appetite. Dinner is around 10pm, and consists of some light tapas, like slices of ham or seafood.
On this particular food tour, we’re covering the length and breadth of Spanish cuisine in just four hours, which means our aperitivo is served immediately after breakfast. Sanne takes us to Mercado de San Miguel, one of the oldest covered markets in Madrid.
This gastronomic gem is housed in a gorgeous early 20th-century building, with ornate wrought-iron columns and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. It’s packed with stalls selling every type of tapas you could imagine, from caviar to potato chips.
We head to a bar which serves local