April 2012

Last night Lisa Abend, who wrote a book last year, The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, about spending a year in the kitchen at Ferran Adrià’s elBulli, and I joined the Marques de Griñon and his daughter, Xandra, for a dinner that, for me, really epitomized the whole Madrid food scene these days.

For one thing, our reservation at Sergi Arola Gastro was at ten. For another, it proceeded slowly, like an ancient wedding feast, and lasted almost five hours. In between, we indulged in a numbing array of dishes—12? 15?—I lost count—along with an all-star lineup of wine from nearby producers like Qubél (a visitor-friendly bodega half-an-hour south of Madrid in Pozuelo del Rey), Real Cortijo (a historic winery near Aranjuez founded by Carlos III in 1782), and a superb Cabernet Sauvignon from the Falcos’ own Dominio de Valdepusa.

Rock-star Spanish chef Sergi Arola and his wife Sara.

Chef Arola is intrigued with reinventing rather than replicating Spanish cuisine, presenting a tapa of fresh sardines, for instance, on top of al dente haricots enlivened with garlicky Mallorcan sausage called sobresada, or taking a single sautéed scallop and floating it in a sort of vichyssoise made from a relative of the leek, calçot, grown around the town of Valls in Catalunya. We also had a dish of salty hake, a gratin of sole, and a roast of venison spiced with a Moroccan rub. Followed by several desserts, petit-fours, a 30-year-old sherry, and, eventually coffee.

Sometime after 3 a.m. I begged Sara, Sergi’s wife, who runs the front of the restaurant, to call us a cab. As the rock-star chef and his wife stood with Lisa and me in front of their restaurant, I asked them, only half-kidding, how they did this every night. “We sleep in,” said Sara. And then Sergi shrugged and said, “I never get tired of this. Being with friends, making and serving beautiful food—it’s what we live for. To us, food is life.”

Still, I thought as I crawled in to our cab, satiated and exhausted in equal measure, I don’t know how they do it. I could barely keep my eyes open.

“Hey, what do you say we stop at La Soleá on our way home?” Lisa said in the cab just as I was falling asleep.

Why not? In Madid, the night is still young. Besides, Picasso’s Daughter might still be singing.

Gold Gourmet is the go-to food emporium for Madrid's best chefs.

Another good Madrid olive oil emporium (among other things) is Gold Gourmet, owned by Luis Pacheco Torres who started the family business in 2001 along with his wife and two sones. Madrid’s finest chefs come here for the edible orchids and roses as well as the spectacular selection of Spain’s finest fruits and vegetables—Victoria grapes the size of golf balls, white asparagus from nearby Aranjuez, pale green melons from Villaconejos.

While I chat with Torres, he hand-picks honeycombed colmenilla mushrooms (morels) from a box in front of the store for, he tells me, a “muy famoso” chef. It wouldn’t happen to be Sergi Arola, I ask him, the Ferran Adrià acolyte (of elBulli fame), whose growing empire includes the Arola restaurant in the Reina Sofía Museum and the eponymously-named Sergi Arola Gastro?

Luis just shrugs and smiles in answer to my question. Which I take as a yes.

Gold Gourmet, José Ortega y Gasset 85-87, Madrid.

Just some of the more than 80 Spanish olive oils available at Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero in Madrid.

I mentioned yesterday that at lunch with Carlos Falcó, the Marqués de Griñón, and his daughter, Xandra, we had a lovely squash soup whose earthy notes were highlighted with a dousing of a very fresh, very herbal olive oil that just happened to be produced by the Marqués as well. We got to talking about olive oil (I’m a bit nuts about the stuff) and he suggested that back in Madrid, I stop in at Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero, an olive oil cooperative housed in a 19^th-century building in the trendy Chueca district.

So that was the first thing I did Monday morning. There manager Pedro Javier Rodrigo was flitting around the smallish-shop extolling the virtues of a fruity oil from Cordoba, called Parqueoliva, to a pair of very stylish-looking Italian women. The women were looking for a dipping oil and Rodrigo said this one, made from the aromatic arbequina olives from Siurana, was the best.

After the women had made their purchase, I asked him if he carried the extra virgin oil from the Marqués de Griñón. Of course, he said. He told me that many bodegas also produce excellent olive oil. “Grapes and olives are closely related.”

I bought some of the Marqués’ olive oil, which comes in a dark, Bordeaux-style bottle, as well as the cold-pressed Parqueoliva oil. I have a feeling that neither will make it home with me.

Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero, Calle Mejía Lequerica, 1, (34-91) 308-0505, is closed Sundays.