Southern style
Madrid’s Hollar serves fried okra, pulled pork, other down-home favorites
As the name implies, The Hollar serves lots of Southern-style food: deep-fried okra and green tomatoes, and (are you ready?) fried pickles. Biscuits and pulled pork, cheese grits, hot wings and shrimp po’ boys.
Health mavens shouldn’t despair, however: a nice green salad, with or without protein options, as well as a caprese salad and seared tuna steak, also are on the menu. In a nod to location, just about everything on The Hollar’s menu is available with green chile.
We stopped in for lunch on one of the recent sunny and warmer days when the collective mood called for a little hippie nostalgia, something Madrid serves up better than anywhere else hereabouts.
It was a little too chilly to sit on The Hollar’s stone-paved patio, so we went inside, where it was cozily busy with colorful local customers plus a smattering of fellow day-trippers.
I knew I could count on my East Texas guest to cover the deep-fried section of the menu, and she certainly did, opting for the fish and chips ($11), and sides of fried okra and coleslaw ($3.50 each). Eschewing a burger, on which The Hollar offers many tempting variations, I straddled the chasm between culinary cultures with pulled pork on a biscuit with a side salad ($10.50 plus $2 for the salad).
The fried okra definitely was a delight: the bite-sized pieces were perfectly coated in a thin batter and served piping hot and crisp. The Hollar’s housemade ranch dressing was tangy and herb-y, a step up from the not-housemade ketchup and tartar sauce offered with the fish and chips.
But the fish was generously portioned and lightly battered, and, like the accompanying french fries, cooked to crisp perfection. The fish was cod, which recent home-cooking experiments have led me to conclude is best served (and possibly only edible) deep-fried.
The pulled pork was all it should be: slow-cooked pork, pull-apart tender, in a tangy barbecue sauce with just the right hint of sweetness. I loved the biscuits, which were perfect, too. If I had any criticism, it was only that a little more of the sauce — a merest couple of tablespoons — would have been nice soaked into the biscuit.
The side salad deserves mention. It started with the basics: a handful of mixed baby greens, a few slabs of cucumber, some halved cherry tomatoes. What set it apart was the freshness of the ingredients, including a scattering of exquisitely fresh, ripe blackberries and strawberries on the side, and the dressing, a housemade balsamic that was tart but not overly sharp and very flavorful.
We had enough room for only one dessert, so we passed on The Hollar’s ice cream float offerings in favor of the butter rum cake ($8), one of the day’s specials. It was a very nice yellow cake, baked in its own ramekin and drizzled with a sweet rum-flavored syrup.
The service at The Hollar is very good, and our meal was nicely paced. We appreciated, too, that the waitress seemed knowledgeable about the community and the area, and could answer our historical questions. That’s helpful for visitors to a “destination” town, which Madrid, every bit as much as Santa Fe, certainly is.