Madrid

The last stop on my European journey is Madrid. Looking back over my trip, there were many highlights, no regrets and still one more week in a country that had already been the location for many great experiences. I was hoping that Madrid would continue this trend. Looking at the weather forecast, it looked like my entire stay in this city would be in the 30s. Hot and sunny, a great buffer between me and winter in Melbourne.

I was staying only a few steps from the Plaza Mayor, one of the large plazas in Madrid and a focal point for tourists and street performers alike.


The capital of Spain is well know for its food culture. Even though it is far from any coast, fresh seafood is flown in daily from all over Spain and other produce is available in abundance. While each region of Spain has a unique food identity, Madrid seems to be the place where everything comes together. Even though Valencia is known to have the best paella, I had heard that there was a restaurant in Madrid which was famous for their paella and so I had to give it a try.

The restaurant is La Barroca and is famous for....well, I better let them tell you what they are famous for.


There are several different types of paella on offer here, many with seafood, but I decided on the Valencian, which is with chicken and rabbit.


A very basic, traditional version of the dish, this was not bad, but not fantastic. All the flavours were there, but perhaps I should have had the seafood after all as this just seemed a little too simple.

The next restaurant on my list was one that until recently had two Michelin stars. This last restaurant is La Broche and was started by Sergi Arola and his executive chef at the time was Angel Palacios. They worked together in El Bulli and left to start La Broche. Recently, Sergi has left to start another project and Angel has become head chef here.

While getting a reservation for El Bulli is almost impossible, the influence of what is being done there is possible to see all over Spain. Therefore at La Broche I expected to see modern techniques used to present traditional flavours and maybe a few surprises thrown in for good measure.


The cool, modern exterior leads into a cool, modern, white interior which I found a little sterile, but that may have been due to that fact that I had booked a mid week early dinner (9:30pm) and was the first customer there. Some other customers did arrive later, but only 3 or 4 tables were occupied.


To begin, a snack was placed on the table.


On the far left is a bowl of spherified olives. They look like olives but when you bite them you realise that they are liquid made from olives and then formed into a spherical shape by a chemical process. You get the flavour and shape of the olive, but the texture is purely liquid. The third from the left is Chicken Crackling, the crispy deep fried chicken skin is delicious and crunchy.

The first appetiser course came out in a covered bowl and as the bowl was placed in front of me, the lid was removed and a billow of smoke wafted out. This was Smoked Mussel.


Served on a vegetable "charcoal", this was an interesting dish to watch unfold in front me, but unfortunately the smokiness was so strong that it overcame the whole dish and that was all I could taste.

The second appetiser is called Pizza Margherita.


A playful take on the traditional combination of dough, cheese, tomato and oregano, the base is a cracker with a slice of cheese on top. The red ball on the left is tomato flavoured and tastes a lot like the red sprinkles on Barbeque Shapes (YUM). On the right is a ball of what I assume is oregano foam, because once you break the surface, a green foam comes pouring out. This was fun and tasted great, giving me high hopes for the rest of the meal.

After this came Truffles, Ham and Corn.


A beautifully presented dish reapeating the theme ingredients in several ways, a corn puree, single piece of popped corn, served on a polenta base with paper thin crackling and a small cube of grilled ham. While this was great to look at and try to work out all the different elements, unfortunately it was lacking in depth of flavour and seemed a little bland.

Following this was a cold Strawberry Gazpacho.


A strawberry soup with a prawn in the middle, you'd expect it to be sweet and served at the end of the meal, but instead it was savoury and really brought out another side of the flavour of the strawberry.

The first of the main courses is Ox Crab.


Wrapped in a crepe made from soy milk curd is a gentle, smooth crab filling. Not strongly flavoured with crab, but the texture is silken and decadent.

The fish course is Salmon with Aniseed Flavours.

This is a great way to explore the different ways two tastes can work together, the salmon is perfectly cooked and combined with ingredients which each have a different type of aniseed flavour, including fennel and aniseed flowers.

Sirloin and Garlic is the meat course.


The meat is cooked medium-rare and falls apart at the slightest touch of the knife, tender and juicy. Once again, as with the previous dish, this is an exploration of different ways of preparing garlic to go with the beef. Half a blub of oven-roasted garlic, grilled garlic shoots, a garlic puree and a garlic custard are all on the plate. This was my favourite dish of the meal by far and the taste of the garlic was not overpowering at all, in fact I was trying to get all the different garlic elements into one bite with the meat and when I did it was still not too much garlic.

Dessert time already? The first dessert is a combination of Lemon and Green Tea.


The stick on top is made of green tea and it has a very strong, refreshing taste, the sorbet and gel disc are lemon flavoured and all served on biscuit crumbs. As a palette cleanser this works well and leaves me ready for the sweeter desserts to come.

The second dessert is called Tribute to Principe Biscuit.


Now I've never had or seen a Principe Biscuit and I can't even name all the flavours here, but it was sticky, sweet and delicious with lots of chocolate.

Lastly is a Lemon Jaconde Cake.


A jaconde is a type of sponge and with almond cream and ice cream, this was a delicate, airy and while not bad, not anything amazing as far as taste goes.

Another thing worth mentioning is the coffee selection.


With so many different types of coffee to choose from, coffee connoisseurs would be happy with this list. For me it was too much choice and a random selection, so I chose the Arabic.

As petit fours after the meal, the waiter comes around with a cars filled with six different containers with chocolate inside and asks which I would like to try. You can probably guess my answer already, so here are all six.


Some are filled with lemon sherbet, some with almonds, but the two that stand out are the popping candy inside dark chocolate and the cocoa covered corn. One of my brothers favourite snacks is something called corn nuts, large deep fried kernels of corn coated in a dusting of salty flavouring. The cocoa covered corn is basically the same thing and reminded me of corn nuts in a big way.

At the end of the day, I had a good meal at La Broche and the techniques on display were modern and skillful, but something seemed to be missing. Perhaps an over concentration on the techniques themselves and not enough attention to flavour balance is to blame, but dishes like Sirloin and Garlic are standouts for me.

When in....

“When in Rome…” they say, but I tell you what, it’s hard to keep up.

Let’s start with the driving. I hired a car for the duration of my stay as I’m planning to drive up through the middle of Italy to see some of the countryside and knowing that driving alone would be complicated enough, I also hired a GPS so I wouldn’t have to be constantly checking maps. This was probably the best money I have ever spent as it saved me enormous amounts of time, but I suspect it cost more than I think it did since I’m not sure if it took into account all the areas of Rome (which I may or may not have driven into) which require special permits (which I’m fairly sure I didn’t have). So, if anyone at home is reading this and there is a pile of official looking mail from Italy, I don’t want to know about it ok? Romans make their own rules as they drive and the roads reflect this. In most cases lanes are not clearly marked and a road that would normally be three lanes wide contains five lanes of traffic all cross-crossing without indicators and it always seems to be peak hour. Surprisingly though, I very quickly felt comfortable driving in this environment and as the Lonely Planet guidebook puts it “As a general rule, worry about what’s in front of you, leaving those behind you to think about your rear!”

Breakfast in Italy is more about coffee than food. The traditional espresso is usually had standing up at a counter with a pastry, perhaps a cornetto (Italian croissant-type pastry often plain but sometimes filled with jam or custard) or a ciambella (doughnut), but the selection in many pasticcerias is far more extensive.






One important thing to note about Italy is that almost everything closes for several hours in the afternoon; this includes many churches and attractions, so if you’re a late riser you might want to consider changing habits while here. During this time, most people have lunch or a siesta or both. Lunch in Italy can often be three or four courses, consisting of Antipasti (Appetiser: Often cold), Primi (First Course: Carbs mostly – Pasta, Risotto, etc), Secondi (Second Course – Meat, fish, etc) and Frutti e Dolce (Fruit and Sweets). Dinner is the same, but who can do that twice in one day, or even once unless you don’t have anything else all day? So what can you have for lunch on the run that isn’t going to take 2 hours or make you lie down in the first available shady spot for a siesta?

One of the lunchtime staples is the perennial favourite – Pizza. Almost a never ending variety is available by the slice, but the main feature is simplicity and freshness with many having only two or three ingredients. One place I found, while obviously targeted to tourists showed quite a bit of pride in itself and I had to take this photo. As many of you know, if this was a sign in Melbourne I would have a great time picking on all the spelling mistakes, but this is Italy.

While they don’t have over 180 different varieties available at all times, the selection of the day is still impressive:

Since I love mushrooms on a pizza, I decided on the mushroom pizza, which has at least two different types of mushrooms as you can see and was delicious if a little oily.

Another favourite on a hot afternoon in Italy is, of course, Gelato. Every street has a gelateria or two, at least it seems that way. The list of flavours is endless and the quality is outstanding. My favourite flavour was Cinnamon, but I only had Gelato once, resisting the temptation is not easy.

I had the rare opportunity to have dinner with three beautiful women in Rome (met up with some friends from Melbourne), so we decided to make a night of it and head to one of the nicer restaurants. From recommendations and from Lonely Planet, we chose La Baguette, a rooftop restaurant. The La Baguette shop downstairs was closed for personal reasons, but access was available though the next door wine shop. We thought it was a different restaurant, but decided to try it anyway. The staff were very friendly, helpful and spoke English quite well. To begin with they served an amuse bouche of smoked salmon, and since I was having dinner with a vegan, a vegetarian and someone who doesn’t eat fish, this meant more for me.

As for main courses, unfortunately vegans are limited in their selection and will probably have to look to the Contorni (side dishes) instead. Helen chose the Green Salad and the Grilled Vegetables.

Vegetarian options are a lot easier and, in fact, I have been eating a lot of vegetarian food since arriving in Italy, which I guess is not surprising after Serbia. Monica selected the vegetarian pasta.

Nancy had the rack of lamb, which was perfectly cooked.

I chose the Swordfish with green pepper sauce and zucchini and mint sorbet. This was sensational, the coolness of the minty sorbet was an excellent foil for the spicy green pepper sauce and the swordfish, while not a strongly flavoured fish, was cooked to perfection and had a great texture.

For dessert, Nancy chose the crepe.

I chose the Crème Brulee, which was flamed at the table - it must have had some alcohol poured over it – and tasted delicious.

This was a great meal and I would definitely come here again if I come back to Rome. I loved Rome, but to be honest I wouldn’t come back here in a hurry since there is so much left of Italy to see and experience.