My friend Ange and I were looking for a break from the (delicious) monotony of tapas, so we consulted our guide books and headed to Chueca, Madrid’s gay neighborhood, for some sushi delights. On the way, we passed Bocaito, the tapas restaurant one of our books claimed as the best in Madrid. I pointed it out excitedly to Ange, eager to return another night. We continued our journey for sushi, only to find that since the guide book had been published, our original destination had been converted into none other than a … tapas bar! So we turned right around and headed for Bocaito.
The front tapas bar was packed when we arrived, so we ordered some house white wine and munched on salty, spicy olives soaked in chili pepper oil as we waited for a table to open up. Smiling down on us from pictures on the walls were various celebrities that have dined at Bocaito–we toasted to Penelope Cruz, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. The wait was pleasant; as we chatted, the people around us downed tapas and smoked their lives away.
Busy Bee Bartenders
The friendly hostess seated us after about fifteen minutes, and she was nice enough to note that we were Americans and offer us the English version of the menu–which proved extremely helpful. Ange and I scoured the menu, trying to find the best options at the cheap(er) prices. I settled on smoked crab on toast, while Ange chose bacalao on toast. We shared mushrooms sauteed with garlic and oil.
Savory Hongos (Mushrooms)
The mushrooms came out first and didn’t last long; they were salty, soft and savory–the garlic perfectly complemented the earthy mushroom flavor. We next tried our respective toasts. Mine was pretty plain and a little disappointing. The toast was a good balance between crunchy and soft, but the crab was cold and didn’t taste smoky at all. Ange’s bacalao toasts were much fishier and had more flavor, but they still weren’t worthy of the “best tapas bar in Madrid” recommendation. Luckily, we had our leftover garlic oil to dip them in, which greatly improved their flavor.
Crab toast :/
As we nibbled on our disappointing second round of food, we noticed plates of scrumptious-looking entrees and tapas flying past us and wondered where we had gone wrong. We decided Bocaito is worth another try, so we’ll be back in the future to toast Penelope, Sandra and Hugh again.
Food we were soo jealous of!
A couple of notes about eating in Spanish restaurants:
1) Don’t expect American-level service. It is not normal to tip in restaurants, so servers don’t need to work as hard for their money. I’m usually a stickler about good service, but I’ve needed to drop that in Spain. Unless you’re at the top restaurants, you gotta move on.
2) Be really sure you want those extra carbs. Restaurants will charge up to 3€ PER PIECE of bread. So before you go reaching for that bread basket, ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”
3) Drink up. According to Madrileños, their water is the best in Spain, if not Europe. Yet for some reason, restaurants are hesitant to serve it to you. If you don’t want to pay extra for every bottle of water, make sure you specify that you want water from the tap.
Bocaito, www.bocaito.com, Calle de Libertad 4-6, Madrid, Spain
1 Comment
March 28, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo