Comida

The food in Spain is as amazing as one could imagine. It was inexpensive and delicious!

This was my first experience with paella in Spain, we went to TapaTapa right in the city center called Gran Via. Gran Via was one of the main attraction sites in Madrid, comparable to Times Square and Soho, but not nearly as crowded. This paella was delicious, it was given to us still simmering in the pan. Hot and fresh, just like most of the meals I had in Spain.

This burger and drink (don’t remember what it was) was actually all vegan. They had a few vegan spots in Madrid, this was one of the ones that we went to: Viva Burger.

We found a nice little Korean spot amongst a bunch of other Asian eateries in this small Asian-cultured barrio.

This magical yellow food right here is tortilla! It’s not how we here in America are used to seeing tortilla, it’s basically like an omelette but way better. Almost every store you went to would sell tortilla in a small sandwich as such, called bocadillas. They don’t cost much either and two can fill you up sufficiently. The picture on the left, is tortilla casera (homemade) by my host mom. She made the best tortilla out of all of the ones that I had tasted there. Tortillas usually were just egg and potato, some people added onions to theirs. It’s such a simple dish, a staple dish of Spain alongside paella.

Another interesting thing about eating in Madrid or Spain, a lot of dishes came with egg or tuna. Kind of like how we put cheese on everything, they put one of the two on it. It took some getting used to but I miss it now, haha.

This was homemade vegetable paella with an egg sunnyside up, made by my host mom.

This dish was also made by my host mom, this was dinner although here in America it would be considered a breakfast scramble. It was a tuna steak, a ball of rice with tomato sauce drizzled on top and an egg on the side. The proper way to eat this dish was to break up the food and mix it together.

 We found this nice Mexican restaurant in Madrid. It was tequila oriented, so the decor in the restaurant was lined with framed pictures of different agave leaves that makeup the different type of tequilas. The food was good. We ordered a sampler plate since we weren’t super hungry (we just had ice cream, as pictured below ↓). It came with chips and guacamole, a tamale, empanadas, and four mini quesadillas.

In Spain, dessert after dinner was traditionally yogurt or fruit. My first night having dinner with my host family, mom served us Natillas, which was pudding and it

was my absolute favorite. I could not get enough of this stuff – much better and richer than American pudding.

This is the ice cream I mentioned earlier. I don’t remember the name of the ice cream shop and I vaguely remember where it was. Which is really a shame because this was the best ice cream I have ever had and I’m big on ice cream. I also don’t remember the exact name of the flavor either but I think it was velvet cotton candy. Spain did not disappoint with their ice cream:

They had this pop-up shop called The Alaska Factory. It was amazing, they had so many different flavors of pops, some of them were cream based like actual ice cream and others were your traditional fruit and water based ice pops. The one I got, which is pictured on the right is a white chocolate mousse. Funny thing, right after I took that picture on the right a bird pooped on my foot. Apparently that’s good luck! I was grossed out but elated that the bird got my foot and not my ice cream.

These were a few of my favorite go-to spots (hover for captions):

This is a quesadilla from Takos Al Pastor. I added their special sauces to it. Their food is quick and relatively cheap and oh so delicious. One of my top five favorite spots in Spain.

This is just the outside of the quesadilla.

This place is called Cien Montaditos. They had 100 items on their menu. All really affordable. In this picture I had a small bocadilla, I forget what was in there – I think it was fried squid. I also got nachos and a tinto de verano, a summer wine which was kind of just like carbonated sangria. Which all cost me about 4 euros which is or was at the time, about 4 US dollars.

This was my favorite drink in Spain. Fun fact they used to sell it in America but it got discontinued here, bummer! It was a beer infused with tequila, when I first saw the ads for it I had my qualms about it. It could either be really good or really bad. But I was in Spain it was time for me to try new things, so I tried this and I fell in love. I’m not a beer drinker, but this was my go-to!