Terroir Murray Hill

Occasion: Spur-of-the-moment tapas crawl with my shenanigan buddy Yining
Location: Terroir on Third between 30th and 31st (wineisterroir.com)
Edibles: Breaded and deep-fried lamb sausage; beet salad

Musings: Hey! There's a Terroir three blocks from me! The original location is lovely, but too crowded on a regular basis and too far to be a regular hangout for me.

The new Murray Hill location has more seats and it's not too crazy yet - though it's only the opening weekend so who knows what it'll be like in a few months. (Since the meatheads found Hofbrau, it's been a complete madhouse.)

Food's good. Serving sizes aren't huge - they're really just to munch on while you drink. Be prepared to spend a lot if you're wanting the equivalent of a full dinner.

A note on the wine: They pour pretty generously on their tasting size. At half the price, Yining's tasting was just a splash less than my (supposedly) full pour. Happy hour prices are great - $6 for their wines by the glass ($3-4 less than regular prices) and free tastings of sherry. BUT... it's only until 6:00. I get out of work earlier than anyone else I know, and even I would be hard-pressed to make it there in time.

[Postscript 2/3/12: The friseé salad with duck confit, shallots and gorgonzola is AMAZING. They were warming up some duck and I literally smelled the delicious aroma from fifteen feet away. Of course, I had to have some.]

Tapas Barinn

Occasion: Continuation of snacking
Location: Tapas Barinn on Vesturgötu in Reykjavik, Iceland (tapas.is)
Edibles: grilled squid with chili and garlic; Icelandic sea-trout with sweet pepper salsa; langoustines baked in garlic; a skewer of neck of pork in romesco sauce; ovenbaked monkfish wrapped in Serrano ham with pesto

Musings: Tapas Barinn is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the food was pretty tasty. On the other hand, the whole place could have used a good scrub and the kitchen is a disorganized disaster.

The place was hopping busy when we stopped by, so we were escorted to a couchy sort of area to wait. The coffee table was sticky from spilled drinks, and so were the drink menus. The dim lighting only helps hide what you see, not what you touch.

After a glass of wine, a booth near the entrance opened up. It was a bit chilly from the constantly opening door, but they anticipated it and provided each booth with some blankets. As a bonus, our booth was right across the open kitchen and I could easily observe the goings-on.

We started with three plates. The squid was okay, not very memorable. The pork skewer was cooked unevenly - the top part that I ate was overcooked (presumably because it was closer to the flame) whereas the lower part that Yining had was nice and juicy. Of the three, the sea-trout was the best. Scandinavian fish continues to impress.

During the slow progression of dishes, we were able to observe the kitchen in action. Here's their problem: the menu's too big for so small a kitchen. The restaurant has two fairly large dining rooms, both serviced by a long, narrow kitchen the size of your average hallway. They had about six people in there, bustling around, each doing their own thing. They also had an underling popping up and down a ladder to get miscellaneous plates and condiments from the attic. You could tell that the kitchen was behind and being harried by the waitresses for food, and yet sometimes there'd be a dozen plates waiting for pickup.

With a space like that, you need to really be smart. Pare down the menu. Design front-loaded dishes and do the bulk of your work in the mise en place before dinner service. Have people work in a single area in the kitchen, performing a single task (e.g. grilling, saucing) for all the dishes instead of having one person responsible for completing a single dish.

(Tia Pol has this down to an art. Their kitchen is maybe six feet square and they produce exquisite food, hot and fast.)

While spying on the kitchen, we saw them produce a baked langoustine dish that looked pretty tasty. I hopped across the aisle and their expeditor confirmed that it was the langoustine with garlic (though they call it lobster). We ordered one. The langoustines had that slightly mealy texture that frozen seafood can get. A second underwhelming shellfish experience.

As a pleasant surprise, the kitchen sent over a monkfish on the house. (I guess the expeditor doesn't get to talk to diners much? I'm not above flirting with restaurant staff for free food but I honestly barely spoke to the guy.)

Each dish was $8-11 dollars, which doesn't sound like much but does tend to add up when you're ordering lots of tiny dishes and getting drinks as well. For what amounted to a hearty snack or a light dinner, we spent enough to pay for a three-course meal with drinks at a fairly nice restaurant in New York. Eating out in Iceland is expensive!!

Indian Mango

Occasion: Dinner with Yining (while it's full light out - weird)
Location: Indian Mango on Frakkastigur in Reykjavik, Iceland (indianmango.is)
Edibles: chicken tikka masala, aloo gobi (stewed potatoes and cauliflower), tandoori lamb kebabs and two sides of rice (we're Chinese - we like our rice)

Musings: The food was great, on par with what I've had in cities with major Indian populations (i.e. Vancouver, New York, London - that's as close as I can tell on authenticity, having never been to actual India). The spices were well-balanced, the meats were tender, the rice, fragrant and fluffly.

The only slight ding would be for price. The meal ran us about $100 after tip, and that's with no beverages at all. A similar meal at Brick Lane would probably come to about $80 all told. So I figure the math works out something like this: New York real estate < Iceland's short tourist season + cost of importing all of the exotic ingredients, and probably a goodly number of the mundane ones.

Hermans

Occasion: Vegetarian buffet dinner
Location: Hermans on Fjällgatan in the Södermalm neighborhood of Stockholm, Sweden - nearest T-bana stop is Slussen (hermans.se)
Edibles: all the greens and beans your heart desires!

Musings: Although its menu is pretty far outside my usual preferences, I give a big thumbs up to this place. The location is fantastic - right along the water, with picnic tables in a multi-level garden. This was the view from our table:

When the sun started to set, the light gilded the plants and it was just gorgeous.

The buffet is 150 SEK (~$20). Beverages and dessert are extra, but coffee and tea are included.

There was a grill station outside where they were doing tomatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplant and other veggies. They had this great grilled tofu with a marinade of soy, sugar, garlic, ginger and sweet chili paste. Really yummy. I had about six pieces.

Inside, there was a table with all sorts of casseroles, stews, salads and a giant basket of different breads. I know it's not the best way to get your money's worth at a buffet, but is there anything as wonderful as a fresh, chewy piece of bread slathered with butter? I think the below pic was my second go-around. I probably had four plates like it.



The weather was really just perfect that day. While we were eating, about ten hot air balloons lifted off.

We lingered over mugs of tea as it got dark. A perfect end to the day, and to the Stockholm leg of our trip.

[Postscript: You know, I bet a restaurant like this would absolutely kill in Brooklyn.]

Pelikan

Occasion: Our first Swedish dinner!
Location: Pelikan on Blekingegatan in the Södermalm neighborhood of Stockholm, Sweden - nearest T-bana stops are Medborgarplatsen and Skanstull (pelikan.se)
Edibles: salmon sampler to start, then we shared the Swedish meatballs and the pork knuckle - fläsklägg!! [It became my rallying cry for the rest of the trip.]

Musings: Bourdain had dinner here when he was in Stockholm, so we figured it was a safe bet. It's a pretty popular place and we had to wait about half an hour for a table. We sat outside with a beer and had some fun with a toy Papa Smurf that I'd gotten with my Happy Meal at JFK. You know, as you do.

By the way, I should note that it's extremely expensive to drink in Sweden. Our drafts were about $13. Each. [Postscript: At some point in our trip, I asked a local how Swedes can afford to get drunk. Apparently, it involves some serious pre-gaming.]

By the time we made it inside, we were pretty hungry. We started out with the salmon sampler, which featured three preparations - poached, smoked (almost like salmon jerky) and cured, with tartar sauce and pickled cucumbers. I liked the cured the best, but my only real complaint about the dish is that it wasn't bigger.

The mains were a split. Yining and I both found the Swedish meatballs pretty dry and flavorless, even with the gravy and lingonberry sauce.

The pork knuckle, on the other hand, was freaking fantastic. Really flavorful and cooked to a turn. It was served with some really pungent mustard and sauerkraut on the side. Really excellent. Fläsklägg!!

BBQ Village

Occasion: Yet another meat-a-palooza shenanigan with Yining.
Location: BBQ Village on Northern Blvd in Flushing, Queens (bbqvillage.net)
Edibles: bbq'ed meats galore, all you can eat for $30

Musings: We went during ultra peak hours (i.e. regular weekend dinner) and paid the highest price on their matrix. You can get a better deal for more inconvenient time slots. On weekdays it's $25 per person. And the late night special is hard to beat - after 10pm on weekdays it's $17 per person, and after 11pm on Friday and Saturday, 10pm on Sunday, $20.

The meats all looked fresh and were of a decent quality. Be careful not to overcook the beef - it goes from juicy and tender to tough and chewy in about 30 seconds. Surprisingly, the pork kalbi was our favorite. It stood up to erratic cooking times really well and had the same yummy marinade as the beef.

There's also a selection of cooked dishes, vegetables, soup, rice, and fresh fruit for dessert. I quite enjoyed their braised short ribs and was hard-pressed to stop at just one bowl of rice.

This is a niche restaurant - all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ is not for everyone. If you are usually satisfied with a normal-sized Korean dinner, you might as well stay in Manhattan at the weekend prices. Meat-tooth that I am, even I don't think I'll be shlepping out to Queens just for BBQ Village.

In the end, transportation's the biggest hurdle. The closest LIRR stop is Broadway in Queens. After dinner, you might decide (as we did) to walk to the Flushing Main Street stop, about 20 minutes away. If you're headed back to the city in a rental car after some event, the late night special might be worth considering.

Cafe Ronda

Occasion: Dinner with Abby and Jill
Location: Cafe Ronda on Columbus between 71st and 72nd (caferonda.com)
Edibles: calamares fritos; gambas al ajillo; spinach salad with goat cheese

Musings: While waiting for the girls, I ordered a cocktail at the bar. The drink was rum-based, but what their drink menu didn't mention was that they used coconut rum to make it. I really don't like coconut - it reminds me too strongly of sunscreen. Over a period of about 20 minutes, I took maybe two or three small sips of the drink. The bartender finally asked me if I liked it, and I told her about my coconut-suncreen thing. At which point she did nothing. Didn't comp the drink, didn't offer to make me a new one with regular rum. Boo. What NOT to do in terms of customer service.

The calamari was a nice big dish at $9. Inexplicably, the $11 shrimp were puny and came in a tiny dish.

Bottom line: Give it a pass - there are lots of better options on the UWS.

Porsena

Occasion: Winnie's birthday!
Location: Porsena on E 7th between 2nd and 3rd
Edibles: pea risotto and baby octopus starters to share; various pasta mains (more detail below)

Musings: There's a lot to like about this restaurant. It's a cute, cozy space. The staff couldn't have been nicer to us. The food gave me the impression that the chef really has a strong food philosophy, and cares about good ingredients.

That said, I'd give it an average score of B+. There was a something about almost every dish that was just a little bit off. With a few small tweaks, it could be amazing. (Or at least amazing to me. It's entirely possible that the chef and I just don't have the same palate, whereas you might find the flavors perfect as they are now. Porsena is kind of place where you tend to give the chef the benefit of the doubt.)

The pea risotto, for example. The perfect spring dish, it was competently prepared. I did find it oversalted, and texturally it needed to be a bit looser. (You can tell by the way it's mounded up in the picture that it's too stiff. A perfect risotto would slowly ooze into shallow puddle.)

The octopus was great. No problems there.

I also ordered the beef tongue appetizer, more out of curiousity than anything. I liked the concept of the dish; I think the pickled vegetables were absolutely the right side to serve with the meat. The tongue itself was a little mealy. Maybe it should have been served cold instead of room temp? I'd skip this dish, at any rate.

For my main, I got the pasta with spicy lamb sausage. The pasta was very interesting, a wide tube shape with ridges on the inside. It was cooked perfectly al dente. The lamb sausage had a great flavor - unfortunately, I could only enjoy the complexities of the flavor for a few bites before the aggressive spiciness numbed my mouth.

I also tasted of Winnie's uni pasta and Gabrielle's pasta curls with many cheeses. The sea urchin sauce was too rich and too fishy for my taste. I don't think I could have finished a whole dish of it. Winnie loved it, though. The cheese sauce was likewise too rich, though I loved the whimsical pasta shape.

I give this place at least one more try. Start with the octopus and maybe try another pasta.

Macondo

Occasion: Huijin's birthday dinner, with Yining and Melissa
Location: Macondo, on E Houston and Allen (macondonyc.com)
Edibles: clam ceviche; chorizo and shrimp; pork belly flatbread; mofongo de pulpo (mashed plantains and octopus), feijoada (a Portuguese stew) and duck tacos; two desserts to share - chocolate cake filled with dulce de leche and French toast stuffed with lemon cream cheese

Musings: I've passed this place a hundred times and never felt the urge to go in. That sign, maybe - it just looks cheesy.

But now that I've been, I'm definitely going back. The reason? Their awesome and totally addictive pork belly flatbread with tomatoes, lima beans and mahon cheese. It's super crispy and savory... just wonderful. If we hadn't ordered so much other food, I'd've insisted we get another one.

If the flatbread was the winner of the table, the feijoada was the loser. It was a special, not on the regular menu. One of the most expensive dishes of the meal at $15, the stew just sort of muddy and didn't have any depth or pizzazz.

Everything else was tasty. The portion on the duck tacos is perhaps a bit small and hard to share, but they were delicious. I also really liked the clam ceviche. Very refreshing, and it's a generous serving.

The French toast dessert (torrija) is HUGE - even with four of us eating it, we barely made a dent. Both it and the chocolate cake (brazo de gitano) were very, very sweet. I personally would have had trouble finishing a whole dessert by myself but it was great to have just a few bites.

With a round of cocktails, tons of great food and two shared desserts, our dinner came out to a very reasonable $40 per person including tip and tax.

Libertador

Occasion: Cinco de Mayo! Dinner with Brigid after an Opera Hispanica showcase.
Location: Libertador on Second and 89th
Edibles: chicken, beef and spinach empanadas; skirt steak

Musings: All the Mexican places were crazy packed, natch. We were too hungry to wait out the crowds and so ended up at Libertador, figuring that Argentinean was sort of in the ballpark.

It had been a long and frazzling day, so I took full advantage of their fantastic half price Cinco de Mayo drink specials. (I think they offer the awesome prices for regular happy hour too.) I had something that tasted like boozy Welch's grape juice and then their sangria. Both packed quite a punch. I like a bartender who pours generous.

Good empanadas. I liked the beef the best; Brigid liked the spinach. But all were yummy.

We sat at the bar around the grill, and watched quite the parade of sizzling meats before our dish came up. By that time, I was positively drooling and pretty much dove in headfirst. Awesome skirt steak with some nice garlicky fries on the side. Not cheap but so very, very good. Meat-tooth happy.

I'll definitely be back. I've been looking for another restaurant within walking distance of Brandy's for ages!

Pylos

Occasion: Dinner with Josh
Location: Pylos on 7th between First and A (pylosrestaurant.com)

Edibles: beets; saganaki; octopus; lamb chops; walnut cake and Greek coffee

Musings: Really funky interior - the ceiling is strung with hundreds of clay pots. Very distinctive.

They start you off with some warm pita and hummus, and it was soooooo good. Possibly the best part of the meal, in retrospect. Which is not to say that the rest of the food wasn't great - because it was. But that pita was REALLY amazing. Mmmmm.... warm bread.... one of life's simple pleasures.

The beet salad was massive - definitely good to share. The octopus was not - just two smallish tentacles for $14. It was cooked perfectly, though, not rubbery at all and with the perfect amount of char. Saganaki's pretty uniformly delicious and hard to mess up. Pylos' tasted pretty much like every other one I've ever had, but it did go great with that warm pita.

Since we got so many apps, we just shared a single main. The lamb chops we got were yummy. Also perfectly charred, and they got the doneness spot on.

I really just had a bite or two of the walnut cake. It doesn't say anywhere in the description, but it's got tons of cinnamon. Gag. The Greek coffee was tiny but incredibly potent - the kind of stuff that's often described as being able to float a horseshoe. I'd get the unsweetened, and try to do it myself next time; the pre-sweetened version was too much even for me, and I put about five sugars in my regular coffee.

Pylos is a good option for fancy Greek. I'd definitely come back to try some of the other things on the menu. And hey, if you want to keep it economical, just load up on that maaaaarvelous pita....

Ember Room

Occasion: Pre-theatre (Importance of Being Earnest) dinner with Amy, Howard, Brigid, John and Josh
Location: Ember Room on 9th between 45th and 46th (emberroom.com)
Edibles: I had the miso eggplant and the oxtail; Josh had the shrimp satay and Korean BBQ fried rice; we also had the mushroom salad, chocolate baby back ribs and the slider trio on the table, among others (I don't remember precisely who ordered what)

Musings: Ember Room is a new Todd English restaurant in the Hell's Kitchen / theatre district area. Unsurprisingly, the service felt like it hadn't quite settled down into a comfortable routine yet. We were eating pretty early and the restaurant was half-empty, but they had a bit of a delay in seating us and then didn't have enough menus to go around once they did.

The waitress recommended that we order tapas-style and share, but the portions are so small that they're really only practical for two people to share, not a whole table. The only dish big enough for multiple people to try was Amy's mushroom salad.

I was not impressed by the food, as I'm generally not by fusion cuisine. I thought my two dishes tasted overly sweet, and flavors were heavy-handed and muddled. It's like the food that was all the rage twenty years ago when chefs though it would be rad to put soy sauce, miso and wasabi in everything. With all the delicious, authentic and cheap Asian food available in the city, why bother with this junk?

The hunt for a good theatre district restaurant continues....

Chez Sam

Occasion: Group dinner in Essaouira
Location: Chez Sam - I really have no idea where it was, other than it was outside the medina walls. But Essaouira's small, so you should be able to find it.
Edibles: I had the shrimp and avocado salad, seafood soup, and then the sole

Musings: This place totally did not feel like it was in Morocco. The interior décor is what you'd expect to find in any old, family-owned restaurant in the midwest - dark wood panelling, tchotchkes and faded photos everywhere. They also played this bizarre retro American music mix; I remember hearing mostly motown and disco.

So, fine dining it ain't.

But the seafood was fresh and not terribly expensive. Though we mostly ordered on our own, the dishes were large enough to share. My sole dish, for example, came with three whole fish (of which the below photo shows one).

The dishes were hit and miss across the table. The sole, and most of the other fish dishes, came with some pretty sad and limp boiled vegetables as sides. My soup was bit watery and thin, but I did like the avocado and shrimp. Alice's shrimp omelet was the best of the dishes I nibbled from. If memory serves, Tony ordered a calamari tagine that he liked quite a lot as well.

Our dinner was fine but I'd have to guess that there are better restaurants in Essaouira.

Grand Café de la Poste

Occasion: Big group dinner - the first wedding event
Location: Grand Café de la Poste, on the Place du 16 Novembre in the new part of town, Guéliz
Edibles: all sorts of stuff - more details below

Musings: They have quite the quirky menu at Café de la Poste. In my immediate vicinity at the table, there ended up being four different world cuisines represented, and the menu had at least two more.

In general, this kind of menu makes me nervous. It's tough on the kitchen in two ways: the staff have to learn to cook a ton of dishes, and they need to keep a lot of ingredients on hand (which in turn means that either their food costs are astronomical, or most of the stuff's frozen). For the customer, ordering is a crapshoot. There's always at least one cuisine the restaurant doesn't do very well - question is, which one?

Anthony and Michelle pronounced themselves "tagined-out" after their adventures in Fez and the Sahara before meeting up with the wedding party. Anthony ordered spaghetti Bolognese and Michelle ordered a steak. Anthony's pasta looked pretty mediocre. Michelle's steak was gigantic, but I didn't find it particularly appealing.

Winnie and Alice both ordered fish. I had a nibble of them, and both were fine. Not stunning or anything, but decent. I was really craving something fresh and crisp, so I ordered the salad with chicken and avocado. It was also fine, if a bit overloaded with chicken and light on the lettuce.

Imon was particularly adventurous and ordered a French dinner of escargots and seared steak tartare. Surprisingly enough, the escargots were done perfectly! Really buttery and tender. Hands down my favorite dish of the night. The steak tartare was well-seasoned, but I didn't like how the searing made the meat lukewarm. I like my tartare nice and chilled.

Café de la Poste has a nice space, but the menu could use some editing. If French is what they do best, they should stick with that and not faff around trying to be all things to all tourists.

Le Marrakchi

Occasion: First dinner in Marrakech!
Location: Le Marrakchi, in the northeast corner of Place Jemaa-el-Fna, the big square in the southern part of the medina (lemarrakchi.com)
Edibles: assorted salads; lamb tagine with figs; couscous with raisins and onions [Note: Le Marrakchi does openly serve alcohol, presumably with a license.]

Musings: The first thing I noticed - the incredible view of the square at night.

We started with the salad assortment. Moroccan salads, interestingly enough, usually involve cooked vegetables, though served at room temperature. The assortment at Le Marrakchi included a tomato salsa-like thing; marinated zucchini; cucumber salad; spiced potatoes; lentils; stewed eggplant; some sort of sweet gourd; stewed peppers; and spiced, cooked carrots.

For our main, we had lamb and couscous. The scent of the lamb that wafted out when they opened the tagine was incredible. The picture below looks the way it does because we immediately dove in without a thought to taking a picture! The taste absolutely delivered on the promise from the aroma. The lamb was falling-off-the-bone tender and I really liked the earthy sweetness from the figs.

And let me take a moment to wax rhapsodic about the couscous. It was just SO light and fluffly - leagues better than anything I've ever had stateside. (The parboiled stuff in a box - which I have cooked, served at dinner parties, and previously enjoyed myself - is forever ruined because now I know how it's supposed to taste.) It's the same kind of revelatory feeling I had when I tasted really good steamed rice for the first time.

[Postscript: I later learned from Giorgina that the proper way to prepare couscous is to steam it for 1½ to 2 hours, over a sort of simple vegetable court bouillon. It's occasionally taken off the heat to loosen any lumps by hand, and to massage some olive oil into the grains. No wonder it tastes so much better! Time and effort are hard to fake.]

The food was just plain wonderful. Le Marrakchi violates all my rules for travel eating - the "Tourist Central" location; the stereotypical local food (though they have the good sense to do it simply, without pretentious flourishes); not patronized by any locals at all. But I loved it. Whodathunkit?

Part II, 3/29: We came back here for our last dinner in Marrakech. We ordered the same salads and couscous, but got the chicken tagine with lemon and olives, and the keftes (meatballs in tomato sauce with egg). The chicken was not as good as the lamb, or as good as the chicken tagine from Dar Ilham. I found meatballs were smidge dry and tough, as they were the other two times we had this dish. Maybe that's just how it's made?

Mercado de la Reina

Occasion: Dinner with Winnie
Location: Mercado de la Reina, Gran Vía 12 in Madrid, Spain (mercadodelareina.es)
Edibles: prix fixe dinner - details below

Musings: This place was across the street from the paella place we had intended to visit. (They were full up, so we made a reservation for the next day.)

I was actually pretty happy about our detour. There was something about Mercado de la Reina that just *looked* right: it was modern and trendy but not obnoxiously so, bustling and, most importantly, not full of tourists. I had a feeling we'd eat well. And I was right.

Despite how crowded it was, we were seated within a few minutes at the bar in front of the kitchen. A prime view of the action! They've a small kitchen, but it looked well-organized and efficient. Another good sign.

As we were only able to half-decipher the menu, we went with the prix fixe. I tried to order different dishes for us for each course (you know, to hedge our bets) and was successful for two out of three courses. Don't know what happened with the first; fortunately, it was a great dish and we both loved it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, there was the amuse bouche, a crostini with a sort of tomato and anchovy sauce and a bit of melted brie:

A good start. The bread was nice - soft but chewy - and the fish in the sauce was an unexpected surprise.

For the first course, we were both served baby broad beans, sautéed with jamón Ibérico (Iberian dry-cured ham) topped with two sunny-side-up eggs. You break the yolks and let them run over the beans, and yum.... heaven. This dish would be a really superlative hangover breakfast. Bourdain would love it.

For our mains, I got the cod with peppers and squid ink sauce. A really nice piece of fish, with a good hard sear on the skin. I don't think the squid ink sauce added much but Winnie liked it. (Turns out she loves all things squid ink - go figure.) I did like the stewed peppers; I think they really brought out the sweetness of the fish, besides being a somewhat unusual vegetable side for it.

Winnie ended up with these tiny lamb chops with french fries. This dish was a complete wild card - I couldn't identify any of the words in the description. The lamb itself was fantastic, crispy and brown and well-seasoned. I could have eaten piles of them, no problem. But they really could have done better than those anemic french fries as a side.

The two desserts were a cream mousse with flambéed pineapple, and a Cantabrian-style caramelized cheese flan with raspberry sauce. I'm not a big fan of flan in general so I thought the mousse was the better one. Of all the courses, I think dessert was the weakest overall.

But bottom line, I was really happy with our meal. Including some table wine, it was all done for 35€ (or about $50). Mercado de la Reina is a restaurant that 1) I wish was located in New York, and 2) I think could do really well in New York. And you know that's my ultimate compliment!

Along with our earlier adventures in Mercado de San Miguel, it really has been an A+ food day, far surpassing my expectations.

Mercado de San Miguel

Occasion: The inaugural meal of the trip!
Location: Mercado de San Miguel, in the Plaza San Miguel, Madrid, Spain
Edibles: we hit several different stalls - more details below

Musings: Foodie heaven!! Winnie and I absolutely gorged ourselves on all kinds of fantastic seafood, snacks and pastries, washed down with wonderfully crisp local white wine. Divine!!

After a quick pass-through to look at the options, we settled on a seafood stall for the first course. We got a plate of octopus with olive oil and paprika, nuked for a minute, then spritzed with lemon juice. Cooked perfectly - really tender, but with just enough chew to it.

We also had oysters on the half shell. These were bigger than I usually like them, but tasty nonetheless.

The real standouts of the day were the langoustines. They were simply prepared - boiled, with a sprinkling of coarse salt and some lemon wedges. But! They had roe! Something new for me. I've had shrimp with roe a few times, but never langoustines. As with the shrimp (or even fish with roe), the meat is a little mealy and not the best. But it's a worthy tradeoff because the roe is wonderful. Be patient - take the time to glean every little bit. And of course, you have the head to slurp! Langoustines are spinier and more heavily armored than shrimp, so it's a bit hazardous, but HOLY MOLEY does it taste amazing. I think my eyes rolled back in my head.

Finally, I had some fresh surf clams. Fantastic.

The stall also served wine in little plastic Dixie cups. Despite the humble presentation, the wine was awesomely delicious: crisp and bracing and the perfect accompaniment to the seafood.

Onward! We hit a little bakery cart for some empanadas. I got one each of the bacalao and the chorizo, and both were excellent.

Next! A cone of olive oil potato chips from this cart. Yummy. (The other half of the case is deep-fried jamón. I tried one, but it was sort of underwhelming. I know.... what a letdown.)

Finally, dessert. Europe is pretty much the only place I can order apple pastries, because they don't always pair apples with cinnamon. This tart was exactly what I was looking for. (Hey, I'm running out of adjectives here!)

So there it is - a truly epic meal. And not a single bobble by any of the vendors we tried. Mercado de San Miguel.... I'm beyond impressed. Bravo!