travelswithalice

August 03, 2019

Madrid: more Malasaña restaurants.

A two-minute walk from Hyatt Centric Gran Via, is an old fashioned little restaurant that serves good “home-cooked’” meals. It’s called PUERTO RICO, serves traditional Spanish food and wines, and is manned almost totally by a Filipino crew.

Starter, main course, and dessert, plus crusty bread and a half bottle of wine total 12.95€.

An exciting new restaurant find in the neighbourhood is ORIO. The downstairs bar displays a delicious spread of Basque style pintxos- designer gourmet stuff.

Pork paté in deep amber aspic, tortilla richly layered with duck liver, and the “Gilda”: an anchovy curled up on a skewer with 3 small crispy green chillies and 2 olives. You get the picture.

Try a selection at 2.10€ a piece with a nice crisp lo-octane txacolí. A glass of cava comes with a pair of oysters for 9€.

The upstairs dining room has an extensive menu. Stuart had a “marmitako” fish stew. I had a “euskal txeria” cochinillo.

PUBLIC is another nice restaurant very close to our hotel. Set menu is 11.65€. It includes starter, main course, bread, a quarter bottle of wine, and dessert or coffee.

With its fresh white tablecloths and staff smartly outfitted in black, the restaurant looks immaculate on a grimy street in an area best described as interesting but dodgy.

Saturday sees the temperature shoot back up to 35 degrees by lunchtime. We scrap our plan to go to Escorial and decide to keep close to home.

Lunch at ORIO was meant to be a light snack. 12 pintxos, 1 apple tart, 2 txacolís, and 2 cavas later, we walk back to the hotel through very still, thick air with the sun beating down to punish us for our over-indulgence.