One of my most favourite people in the whole world is living in Madrid and this weekend I went out to visit her. Madrid being the capital of Gin and tonics and incredible tapas, I knew it was going to be an amazing weekend.
I don’t know if any of you have been to Madrid or if you plan on going soon (which you most definitely should) but I wanted to tell you about this incredible place we went for supper on the first evening. It’s called Gabinoteca and it’s amazing!
Madrid take Gin and Tonics very seriously (as do I), they even have a special glass designed specifically for them. It’s basically a pint glass masquerading as a wine glass. A couple of these slipped down alarmingly easily whilst we waited for our table. Top tip: I found if you clutch the glass with both hands it makes you feel just like a teeny tiny borrower…
It’s the sort of place where you know you can order pretty much anything off the menu and it’s going to be delicious. So we wrestled with how to choose and then made our choices – made a lot easier by the fact that Sophie is fluent in Spanish!
The food arrived and first up was a sort of ‘deconstructed’ chicken caesar salad. But deconstructed in a fun sense, not in a poncy pretentious way, if you know what I mean. The salad leaves arrived in their own little terracotta plant pot, complete with silver scissors to snip the leaves off with. The chicken was coated in parmesan crumbs and was so delicious and the dressing was deliciously creamy. Definitely the most fun Caesar salad I’ve had – but it also tasted so good! In my opinion, the gimmicks aren’t worth anything if the food doesn’t taste as good as it looks!
Next up was definitely not the looker of the evening, but anything it lacked in looks it more than made up for in taste. Fried crispy artichoke with parmesan – amazing, and definitely one I will be recreating at home (and sharing with you all, of course!)
This next one was definitely my favourite of the evening and was so good I just never wanted it to end. It was the kind of dish you wish you didn’t have to share. The kind of dish where you hope so much that your friend wont like it and then you can have the whole lot. Only if your friend didn’t like it she would have awful taste. In which case you probably couldn’t be her friend anyway. Anyway, I digress. You take the lid off this little pot and you are embraced by a friendly wisp of truffle scented smoke. You dig in to a meltingly tender potato frittata topped with a poached egg and shaved truffle. Seriously so good.
A slow cooked duck taco which was delicious and disappeared far too quickly!
Then a rather unassuming polystyrene burger box was plonked on the table and me and Sophie eyed each other cautiously. But we shouldn’t have worried, it contained probably the best ‘burger’ ever. The pattie was beef tartare and the ‘burger sauce’ was a deliciously zingy hollandaise. Such a clever way of presenting beef tartare.
Last but by no means least was the delicate cod drizzled in a japanese miso dressing. So simple but incredibly good.
By this point we definitely did not need pudding, but I don’t think pudding is ever a thing of necessity, is it? We decided to share one and ordered a suitably naughty chocolate option. When it arrived it was a pot of warm runny chocolate goo. Kind of like brownie batter that you pop into the oven for 5 mins. Amazing but calling it a ‘pudding’ might have been a little too kind. We both agreed it was incredibly rich and a little over the to before promptly guzzling the whole lot and licking our spoons completely clean!
An amazing start to what was a lovely weekend in Madrid. Oh and the whole thing, with two enormous drinks only cost 45 Euros, not bad going…think I could get used to this Spanish life!
Oh and don’t worry about that awkward moment when you try and catch the waiters eye – they have a little button you can press and he comes whizzing over to deal with your every whim!
This place is a must for anyone planning a trip to Madrid!
(As if you needed more convincing…they even have a super cool sink in the bathroom…yup that’s right, I take photos of sinks now…help me!).
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