A So So Morning Food Tour.

So I have to say that today’s food tour was not the best tour I have ever been on.  While our guide, Mitzi, was OK, the whole experience felt rushed and was not the relaxing informative food tour I am used to.  I give it a C at best.

Anyway, the group included three women from North Carolina and a family of six (2 adults and 4 kids from Dallas living in Romania doing “the Lord’s work”… the Dad’s comment not mine).  I have to say that the folks on the tour were not a barrel of fun … and I will leave it at that.

We started out the morning in the Literary Neighborhood.  Our first stop was Chocolate Madrid where we had fat churros, which are called porras, a thicker, larger, softer, and airier variation of the traditional churro.  Porras are made from baking soda or yeast and are very popular in Madrid.  Porras are dipped in chocolate and I have to say the addition of chocolate made the dish.

From here, we walked through the narrow streets to reach the Moega Bakery.  Now the weird part about this stop is that we were left standing on the street while Mitzi went to purchase some pastries and once back, she handed out a half a portion to each of us of bollo preñao, a sourdough bread stuffed with chorizo sausage.  This was probably my favourite food of the tour.  And as it turned out the sourdough bread was made from a 15 year old starter.  The bollo preñao was yummy.

We then crossed into the Anton Martin neighborhood near La Latina and made our way to the Mercado Anton Martin, a three story local neighborhood market that has been around since 1948.   We climbed up to the second level and watched as some of the food stands were just beginning to open up.  Our first stop in the market was an olive stand where we there was a small table (only room for six so four folks had to stand) where we tasted six different types of olives.  The olives were, for the most part, quite good, but there was one olive that tasted like stinky socks.  Yuck.

The second dish we tried at the olive stand was anchovies in vinegar with chips.  The anchovies were briny, but not at all bitter and the home made chips were light and airy.  Quite good overall.

We then walked over to a nearby meat stand where our Mitzi talked to us about the variety of jamon (ham) including jamon serrano (from pigs that are raised indoors) and jamon iberico (pigs raised indoors, but in the last three months of life are free range and feed on acorns).  There are four categories of jamon iberico, white, red, green and black.  I suspect that we were given the lowest grade as I previously tried the two middle grades (red and green) and this ham was not nearly as good.  We also tried jamon jerkey, which was probably the best of the three forms of meat we tried.

The last tasting on this floor of the market was olive oil.  We were given some small pieces of bread to dip into the olive oil and quite frankly, I thought the olive oil was too bitter.  I mentioned this and Mitzi said that this is an indication of the high quality of the olive oil in Spain, which has a high concentration of polyphenols – antioxidants that cause the bitter taste.  Huh!  Never heard of this before.

After the olive oil tasting, we wandered downstairs and outside to a fruit stand where we were given one grape and one piece of mandarin orange to taste.  Seriously!  One grape and one piece of orange.  Talk about cheap.  I can’t think of any food tour where I was handed a single grape and a piece of a mandarin orange.  Now the the two minuscule pieces of fruit were quite good.  In fact the orange piece was super sweet, but come on.  Give us more than a tiny sample.  Gesh.

We then walked a short distance down the street to Casa Gonzalez, a cheese and wine shop that has been in existence since 1931.  Apparently the original owner of the shop was an anti-fascist and was jailed by Franco for eight years.  His life was spared because he had access to some of the best farms in the country and given ongoing food shortages in Spain during the Civil War, his connections helped to save him.

Anyway, once we sat down in the back room, we were served four cheeses including a cow’s milk cheese with quince jam, a sheep’s milk cheese, a goat’s milk cheese and a blue cheese (combination of cow’s milk, sheep’s milk and goat’s milk) along with a white wine (to be drank with the cow’s milk and the sheep’s milk cheeses) and red wine (to be drank with the goat’s milk cheese and the blue cheese).  The cow’s milk cheese and the blue cheese were far and away the best cheeses of the four.

We then walked back towards Plaza Major where we stopped at Cervaceria La Campana, a small food stand serving one thing and one thing only: Bocadillos de Calamari (Calamari Sandwich) along with a variety of beers.  Now I had passed this stand when we did our old town Madrid walking tour a couple days ago, and at the time we were told that the calamari sandwich sold at this stand was considered to be the best in the city.  Lightly breaded and flash fried.

We were each given a half a sandwich, and while the sandwich was decent, I wouldn’t call it life changing.  Not sure I understand the attraction to the sandwich, but given the crowds when we arrived, I gather I am in the minority.

So after the sandwich, we walked across the Plaza Major and down the street to Calle Major where we stopped at our last stop of the day, El Riojano, a pastry and chocolate shop dating to 1855.  We walked to the back of the shop, sat down and were served a white cake with egg custard wrapped in almond paste and brushed with powdered sugar.  In addition, we had the option of coffee and tea.

Now I had barely started eating my cake and had only two sips of my tea when Mitzi said it was time to go.  This is probably the biggest reason I was not pleased with this tour.  EVERYTHING was rushed and the food portions were tiny, tiny, tiny.  It was a huge contrast to the food tours I did in Barcelona (with the same tour company), which I thought were both spectacular not only in quality but also with the two guides I had.  Oh well.  Two out of three ain’t bad I guess.

So tomorrow is my last day in Madrid.  I am off to the former capital of Spain, Toledo and then on Sunday it is onward and south to Cordoba.  I am looking forward to leaving the bigger cities behind and seeing some of the smaller areas of Spain.