On Wednesday we embarked on a long-anticipated for our neighborhood food and market tour of the Huertas or literary neighborhood of downtown Madrid. Luke met us in the hotel lobby and we popped into a taxi where we promptly headed to Chocolat, an adorable Cafe with super coffee excellent churros with chocolate sauce more yummy bits of food including Jamon on tomato bread and more. We walked around the area and Luke explained in depth about the history of food and Madrid and where we would be going during the day. Our next stop was the backroom of Mantequeria A. Caballo, 100 year old small market that started selling butter and now had everything. We headed into the back room for a tasting of jams honeys, torta de aciete, cortijo Las Monas EVOO and Rabito Royale. I think our favorite was the chocolate-covered figs which we had to buy some and bring home, although we took several bottles of olive oil as well.
Casa Gonzalez was another very old establishment where we headed into it back room again and enjoyed four Spanish cheeses and both red and white wines.
Arzua from Galicia was a cow aged 6 days, Zamorano a salt cultured sheep aged 3 years max (think Manchego), Radiquero a salt cured goat from Aragon and the fabulous Cabarales Blue a mix of goat, sheep and cow from Asturias.
Our next stop was in the Mercado de Anton Martin, will ask me walk through the market we could hear the stomping feet above us from the flamenco school on the top floor.
We tasted a ton of Spanish olives at our first stop then moved on to taste more amazing jamon bellota and finally ended at an Italian owned lunch stand where we had absolutely fabulous porchetta a la Española.
Los Gatos was a Crepe Bar at lunchtime full of people drinking amazing sweet Miro vermouth on tap and of course there were more sandwiches as if we had not had enough to eat already.
Our last stop was Pan de Pi, a famous bakery phone by a woman from Galicia who Luke explain to us is one of the foremost pastry chefs in the entire city. If you think New York cheesecake is the best in the world you need to come here and taste the Galician cheesecake made from real Galician tetilla cheese that we all adore to begin with.
We were stuffed and needed a long rest because that evening we had our three Michelin star experience coming up.
We headed back to our hotel put our bags down and went out for another 2 to 3 hours of clothes shopping.
