We enjoy going on food tours when traveling, finding them a terrific way to not only eat great food but to learn about a city's history and traditions. My wife and I went on a first rate food tour in Madrid that I wanted to share with you. It was the Tapas, Taverns and History Tour, run by a company recommended to us, Devouring Madrid.
People in Spain like to eat dinner rather late, between 10 pm and midnight, and often have tapas late in the afternoon to keep their hunger in check before dinner. We don't like to eat dinner at 10 pm, so most of our evening meals in Spain consisted of sampling a variety of tapas dishes. This food tour was a great introduction to the types of tapas available.
Here's how our food tour went:
We meet our guide at the Plaza Isabell II, right in front of Madrid's Opera House. We crossed the street to our first stop, the...
Taberna Real :
A terrific atmospheric pub/tapas bar, with excellent food and drink.
Spaniards like Vermouth, which they have on tap in many bars. We started with a glass of Vermouth which was good (but vermouth is not my preferred beverage).
We also had some terrific olives (which the Spanish prepare so well)...
And some of the flavorful and ever-present Iberian ham (from pigs feed a diet of acorns)...
It was a walking as well as a food tour, so we moved to our second stop...
Taberna La Concha:
This is a wine and tapas bar. It's a trendy modern place with terrific food and wine....
A great glass of red wine....
Tasty appetizer of pickles, olives and fish....
Toasted bread with ham and cheese...
Two delicious small tapas dishes the names of which I sadly can't remember....
But I do remember that we finished here with -- strawberries and whipped cream....
We backtracked a little to our third stop, a very popular tapas bar known for its mushrooms....
Mesón del Champiñon:
A busy place with lots of locals and lots of tourists, especially from Japan (who became familiar with this spot because it was featured in one of their popular publications)
They even have their ceiling decorated to appear as if mushroom were growing from it...
The chef was proud of his creations, as he and his helpers prepared trays of stuffed mushrooms that were about to go into the oven...
We enjoyed a plate of them, along with a glass of sangria
We were getting quite full but the tour was far from over. We walked about 20 minutes before getting to our next stop....
La Casa del Abuelo
This was my favorite stop of the evening. A rather small and old tapas bar, known for it's fabulous garlic shrimp. We waited while ours were being baked, and then gobbled them all down. Hard to describe how terrific they were! ….
Our final stop was nearby, this being....
Casa Toni:
A fairly modern and popular place. You could pick the items you wanted to eat from the fresh display in the window and they were cooked for you. I really had no desire to try the sliced ears...
But sweetbreads were on the evening menu for us, although we barely touched them as we neither enjoy their taste or texture...
We did like these sausages...
One of our favorite dishes is this tapas classic, a plate of roasted padron peppers, which we often enjoyed while in Spain.
Overall a terrific food tour which my wife and I really enjoyed. Very recommended.
Note: As with all such tours, we paid our own way and traveled as tourists, rather than travel bloggers. This article represents my genuine unbiased opinion.
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