Madrid Part 3 - El Cacique

Almost every meal I had in Madrid was memorable and El Cacique is WAYYY up there.  My amazing co-worker learned about my love for all things of inner organ origin and proceeded to ordered up a menu so devoid of green roughage but so bursting of innard goodness.  To solidify his amazingness, we ate everything family style so that meant I could try 2X amount of food.  Sharing is caring, you guys.

We started the meal with classic meatballs.  Tender, moist, full of big flavors and tomato tastiness = love.

meatballs

My favorite dish of the night had to be the callos, a very typical Madrileño stew.  And what a stew it was!  A big messy bowl of all my favorite nasty bits in a soul warming bubbling cauldron - tripes, blood sausage, gelatinous pig parts (feet i think), and other unidentifiable but oh so yummy animal parts.  Every slightly spicy bite was a surprise in flavor and texture.

agarggurragaa (a la homer simpson)

After a bowl of innards, we needed more innards.  Molleja, sweetbread, was in order.  If you are a faithful reader of this blog (yes, that one reader out there!), you know my obsession with sweetbread (and uni!  that's irrelevant here.  but what if they mixed the two, omg, my head would explode).  Pan fried sweetbread with a a dash of lemon.  Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, just like a good sweetbread should be.

bread so sweet

And there was more!  A plate of pan fried kidneys to be exact.  I really liked the kidney flavor, but sadly, this dish was overcooked so the kidneys were really chewy.  Plus, how can kidneys compare when there are sweetbreads on the table.

not sweetbread

The meal concluded with a complementary plate of simple cookies and dulce de leche.  A perfect nibble to end the meal.

dulce de leche and cookies

What an awesome last meal in Madrid.  I hope to go back soon.  So much more food left uneaten, so many pig parts untasted.  Thanks to my wonderful and generous coworkers for showing me such a great time and ordering up the best food ever!

Madrid Part 1 - Sobrino de Botin
Madrid Part 2 - Tasting Meal

Bits o' Stuff - Muffin and Vørterøl

While in Oslo, I made my way up to Frognerseteren to check out the gorgeous views and the amazingly pristine snow.  Oslo is seriously one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.  Our hotel front desk woman had highly recommended the muffins at the ski lodge, so I of course had to get one.  While I'm at it, I decided to grab a bottle of what I thought was dark beer.  Hey, cute bear!  Beer bottle shape!  I haven't met a beer I can't drink, so on my platter the cute bear beer bottle went.

muffin and... beer?

The muffin was okay.  It was really sweet and dense.  I did enjoy the crusty muffin top, but overall, it's a bit syrupy sweet for me.

My cute bear beer turned out to be vørterøl. Holy cow, it was crazy. Beer, it was not. It's some kind of fermented malty drink, non-alcoholic. I could not, for the life of me, finish the bottle. The flavor was so weirdly sweet and unpleasant for me. I tried, I really tried. I drank about 1/2 the bottle before surrendering. Let that be a lesson for everyone, not everything in a beer bottle is friendly.

marea

I had a belated dinner dinner with the girls at Marea a few weeks ago.  I've been dying to eat at Marea for a long time since I'm a fan of Convivio and Michael White.  The meal was really tasty, but like Convivio, the stars are the pasta dishes.  The seafood dishes were great, but I think there are comparable places at lower prices.

Light was horrendous at Marea, so I was only able to salvage some pictures.  Plus my feeble memory only remember a few dishes...  So, yep, here are some of our dishes, with or without commentary.

amuse bouche

Our amuse bouche...  fish for sure, but I can't remember!  oops.  Warning, maybe a recurring theme in this post!

scallops

Scallops and stuff.  Yep, recurring theme.

peeky toe

peeky toe crab!

seafood sausage

Oh good, a dish I remember (tis mine).  I remember loving the seafood sausage at Chanterelle and was intrigued by Marea's.  It was good, very concentrated seafood flavor.  Texture is similar to asian fishcakes.  I did wish that the texture wasn't so homogeneous, some seafood bits would have made this dish awesome.

spaghetti with uni

Spaghetti with uni and crab.  How can this dish be bad.  It's similar to the Convivio dish.  I would bathe in uni if it is more affordable, or less weird to be bathing in uni.

lobster ravioli

This was probably my favorite pasta dish of the night (well, that and the rigatoni with braised octopus and bone marrow probably tied, too mad my pics of the rigatoni was crap).  The lobster ravioli  was creamy extremely flavorful.  I love the fish roe that dotted the dish.  It added a contrast in texture in a otherwise very one textured dish.  NOM.

 um..

Right, so I have no clue what this was.  It looks darn tasty yes?  If any of you know, please let me know!

We now know that the delicious dish above is stice - lobster and burrata with eggplant,, slow roasted tomatoes, and basil seeds.  Thanks Olivia!!

brodetto di pesce

This seafood soup was awesome.  The different seafoods were perfectly cooked, not one overcooked component.  I loved the clean flavor.  Ocean-y, love that ocean-y taste.

fish

Fish.  Yes.  Bet you couldn't have figured that out yourself.  You can just tell by looking at it that it was very well prepared.  Much like this fish below.

fish 2

And that i'll have to say about the two fish dishes.  OMG, why are you reading this?  I sincerely apologize for wasting 10 minutes of your life.

affogado

Affogado with espresso and amaro, you just can't go wrong with that combo.  I like.

gianduja

Gianduja, cocoa nib crema, hazelnut chocolate, fior di latte gelatto. 

Right, so that concludes this very informative blog post on Marea.  But really, there have been many many things written up touting the wonders of Marea, you didn't need one more, yes?