Location: Taberna Los Huevos de Lucio, Cava Baja 30 in Madrid, Spain
Edibles: tomato and avocado salad; battered, deep-fried shrimp; callos Madrileña (stewed tripe)
Musings: This place has the distinction for serving us the first mediocre meal of the trip. The tomatoes in the salad were hard and underripe, and there was way too much dressing and cheese. [Postscript: Unlike the fabulous tomatoes in France and Italy, the tomatoes in Spain are about as bad as they are in the US. I base this assertion on three separate instances of tomato consumption.]
The shrimp were okay, but you could hardly taste them under all the breading and sauce. This dish struck me as clumsy, and very American.
The tripe was, frankly, terrible. It's supposed to be a local specialty, and Mario Batali certainly seemed to enjoy it when he was in Spain. But I could only force down a few bites. The different tripes were all variations on the theme of mushy, squishy, and gummy. Kudos to Winnie for eating a good third of that dish so we wouldn't look quite so wasteful.
Total damage was about 30€.
Apparently, what we should have gotten was the soggy fries with fried eggs. Seriously, it was on every table. What is it with the Spanish and soggy fries?
No comments:
Post a Comment