A tapas adventure is the best way I can describe our dinner at Gastromaquia. The tapas were unique and creative. The staff could not have been nicer. The owner came to our table and translated the entire menu into English for us, which was above and beyond. The menu was huge, so translating the entire thing was no small undertaking.
Jake and I started out pretty tame, with guacamole and plantain chips. This was the second time I have ordered guacamole in Madrid, and both times it was completely smooth, almost as if it had been put into a blender.
Next up, the tikka masala mussels. This is one of the restaurant's most popular dishes. The Indian flavors were vibrant and the mussels were perfectly cooked. I have ordered mussels at restaurants in the past, and felt like I ended up with a lot of shells but very little food. Here, the mussels were large and plentiful.
Ready for more, we tried the tuna tartare. This was my favorite of the night. The tuna had been flown in from another part of Spain that day. If I remember correctly, the dish consisted of raw tuna, egg yolk, oil, dijon, lemon juice and spices. This may be a "you had to be there" dish, because between the ingredients and photo, I'm not sure that it would be at the top of my list to try. However, it was out of this world delicious.
Keeping with the seafood theme, our next tapa was the octopus with potato foam. What a strange dish! But definitely strange in a good way. The potato foam tasted like the lightest, butteriest mashed potatoes you can imagine.
Pigs' ears. This is where our adventurousness went too far. Now, based on how delicious all of the previous dishes were, I feel confident these were the best pigs' ears ever prepared. But they were still pigs' ears. They weren't fried (so that you can't really tell what you are eating). No, we could taste all of the different skin and cartilage textures of the ears. I had found my line.
We ended our meal with a unique and tasty dessert. It was vanilla ice cream with coca cola syrup, strawberry sorbet, strawberry sauce and strawberry slices. The flavors somehow went together perfectly. A great end to a wonderful meal.
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