The Spanish capital has transformed its formerly staid restaurant scene into a hotbed of global culinary talent.
After all, thats why I had gone toMadridin the first place.
It was July 2021, Year 2 of our Cruel Mistress Corona.
Fresh seafood awaits preparation at Madrid’s Desde 1911.Credit:James Rajotte
The markets were abuzz with casual vendors and towering food stands.
New openings werent just surviving the pandemic, but thriving.
Do you think their food scene is better than ours?
From left: Chef Roberto Martínez prepares for dinner at Tripea; Plaza Olavide, a popular square in Madrid’s Chamberí neighborhood.James Rajotte
What was going on?
Even my wife, a born-and-bred Catalan with a serious Barcelona bias, was impressed.
Do you think their food scene is better than ours?
From left: Pictura, the bar at Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid; sea urchin with shrimp and caviar accompanied by a seafood skewer at Estimar.James Rajotte
And so, six months after my trip to the Ritz, we set off.
We started atCientotreinta,a bakery in the Chamberi neighborhood that opened in 2017.
Patricia had chosen it to make a point: you cant have world-class cuisine without world-class purveyors.
At DiverXO, a squash-blossom taco on a bed of moss sits next to rooster stew made with beans, citrus, and herbs.James Rajotte
These are the building blocks for greatness, she said.
Weve been eating out a few times a week for ten or fifteen years.
We know whats good.
From left: A restaurant server on Plaza Mayor, Madrid’s main public square; chef Rafa Zafra sizes up the night’s dinner—red snapper—at his restaurant, Estimar.James Rajotte
Pedigree plus product plus a local population that lives to eat?
An unfailing formula for a serious food culture.
Famous fish purveyor Pescaderias Corunesas spent millions converting a nondescript industrial space into a soaring church of seafood worship.
Tripea’s tuna tartare, made with passion fruit, fermented garlic, panko, and chili.James Rajotte
Its an adage that I had always been suspicious of, but lunch that day made me a convert.
The meal began the way it ended, with a tableside cart.
In this instance, one bearing a plank of smoked salmon.
From left: The Palm Court restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz, in Madrid; goose barnacles, crayfish, scallops, lobster, and clams at Madrid’s Desde 1911 restaurant.James Rajotte
A well-dressed gentleman ceremoniously carved veils of fish and placed them before us like communion wafers.
I put one on my tongue and closed my eyes and felt something close to religion.
Choose the ones you want and theyll return to your table transformed into little love letters to the ocean.
From left: Oroya, the Peruvian restaurant helmed by chef Diego Muñoz at the Madrid Edition hotel; valet Salvador Lopez awaits diners at Desde 1911.James Rajotte
At the center of it all was the days catch: an oven-roasted Atlantic kingfish.
But if anyone represents Madrids rising dominance of the seas, its Rafa Zafra.
Ten years ago, you atecocidoand T-bones and little more, Zafra said.
From left: A view down Calle Calvario, in Madrid’s Lavapiés neighborhood; chef Sacha Hormaechea at his namesake restaurant.James Rajotte
But the change has been fast and dramatic.
People want to be here chefs and diners.
For all Patricias expertise and enthusiasm, I decided that I needed an impartial voice in matters of Madrid.
Luckily, I knew just the guy.
Something is happening here.
you might feel it in the air.
The evidence was all around us.
Well-dressed young people with euros burning holes in their designer pockets.
Post-work crews stacked two deep on the sidewalks surrounding the bars and restaurants.
We were in a cab cutting through the Madrid night.
In Madrid, that restaurant isDiverXo,the Michelin three-starred modernist temple helmed by Dabix Munoz.
My cooking is likeBlack Mirror, Munoz said with a roguish smile.
You never fully understand where something is going.
At first you dont grasp the plot, but when you finish, it all makes sense.
In less talented hands, DiverXo would be a disaster.
In the past five years, the city has gone through a radical culinary transformation, Munoz said.
It used to be a classic dining city, less risky, but all of that has changed.
This is what the Spaniards callla cocina de aprovechamiento,where nothing goes to waste.
You want first-rate tacos and a Oaxacan-level mezcal list?
But weve cut through the fat and whats left is mostly excellent.
Madrid always had the old-school roots, Foronda said, trucker hat and facial hair framing his face.
Suddenly, its a young food city.
But there was one persons cooking in this town that could rouse me from a self-imposed fast.
Its hard to think of a more apt description of what goes down in the kitchen at RavioXo.
One chef dressed cold fried chicken with ribbons of carbonara.
Another blasted a batch of rigatoni in a perforated wok wreathed in flames.
Every few bites, I found myself scribbling down another expletive in my notebook.
Its the kind of restaurant I couldnt have opened in Madrid before, said the chef.
Now it feels like the kind of place that he could have opened only here.
The modern tapas bars near Retiro Park pumped out plates of razor clams and acorn-fed ham.
Somewhere nearby, a fish press extracted the last bit of juice from the days catch.
