Sunday night tapas “crawl”

After the adventurers returned from the bullfight, we cleaned up and decided to try our first tapas crawl, since it was Sunday night in Madrid. A tapas crawl is similar to a pub crawl, you go from taberna to taberna having one or two tapas at each. There is a perfect street in Madrid - Cava Baja - to do such a crawl.

We headed out in search of Taberna Tempranillo, one of the suggestions in the Ramos guide, also recommended by Rick Steves. We thought we would start there.

OK, so we learned right away that we weren’t prepared for a tapas “crawl”. More like a tapas sit-down. Also, that you really should take a piece of paper with the place you are looking for written down. Because we didn’t find Taberna Tempranillo (at least not until after we ate at Taberna de Los Lucio). Here is what we had there:

Jamon de jabugo

Chiparones andaluza

Solomillo especial con cebolla fonfitada y foie plancha

Croquetas

Esparragus trivera

Solomillo iberico

The star was the solomillo - perfectly cooked chunks of steak, with a nice size piece of grilled foie gras, accompanied by onion confit. The croquetas were so good we ordered a second plate. And of course, the jamon was fantastic.

As for the crawl part....we crawled away from our table, stuffed, and headed back toward the apartment, after a brief walk down the rest of Cava Baja. There we saw Taberna Tempranillo, perhaps we’ll visit there before we go. On the walk home we did find room for some gelato. Good, but not quite what you find in Florence.

How the Madrilenos handle the late night eating and drinking is something I need to figure out.