Destination Madrid. My “Me gusta” trip.
Contributed by Jens Hoffmann.
We landed at Madrid International Airport Barajas.
The airport name derives from the adjacent district of Barajas, which has its own metro station on the same rail line serving the airport.
Me gusta, I love it to be here in Madrid.
Meliá had developed a new service concept for their hotels. They had compiled a young and higly nice team. The aim is to provide a standard of service that will out-class many other hotels in Madrid.
Madrid is located on the Manzanares river in the centre of both the country and the Community of Madrid, this community is bordered by the autonomous communities of Castile and León and Castile-La Mancha. As the capital city of Spain, seat of government and residence of the Spanish monarch.
The capital is also the political centre of Spain.
Madrid is quite known for sports, education, entertainment, environment, media, fashion, culture and of course food.
Furthermore for lovely parcs and beautiful sunsets.
All this contribute to its status as one of the world’s major global cities.
I am quite familar with the brand and love the boutique style.
The hotel was fully renovated in 2011 and you feel well.
It is located just a few minutes from the IFEMA exhibition centre and Barajas. It offers a beautiful wellness center, different saunas, pool and a fully equipped gym.
After check-in we went jobwise to the “La Rotonda” restaurant.
Under its spectacular glass dome, the perfect place to make a foodie happy.
Great food, the sun is shining.
Back to Meliá.
Nice breakfast and lovely food is served in the hotel restaurant.
Perfect to have a “Cava” and truly fun to have a drink in the outside bar.
Perfect service.
If you travel in Spain, take a train (2,5 hours) from Madrid to Barcelona and try one of my my favorites.
The “El Celler” resto in Girona.
By the way, it is still one of the world’s best restaurant.
Celler de Can Roca is run by the three Roca brothers: eldest brother Joan Roca is head chef, Josep Roca is sommelier and Jordi Roca is the patissier. The restaurant is situated in the pleasant town of Girona, which has a well-preserved medieval old town and is about 60 miles north of Barcelona. The restaurant opened in 1986 but moved to a purpose built new building in 2007, with large kitchens giving plenty of room for its 30 chefs to work. There is also a large temperature-controlled wine storage area at ground floor level to accommodate the vast wine cellar, of which more anon.
It has been ranked as one of the best restaurant in the world and has been often compared to former world number one restaurant El Bulli.
The cuisine served by the restaurant is Catalonian. The resto has a large wine cellar with more than 60,000 bottles. Dishes served include those based on perfumes, and with unusual presentations such as caramelised olives served for example on a bonsai tree.
The dining room is laid out in a triangular shape around an atrium with several poplar trees behind a glass partition. There is a wooden floor but each table rests on its own patch of brown carpet. The tables are well spaced and carefully lit.
There are wooden slats with back lighting forming one wall, a drop window facing the garden another side and a bar area making up the third side.
The tables are set with crisp white linen and Rosenthal china. There are tasting menus around 150 €, as well as a la carte dishes. The restaurant is noted for its large wine selection, and the two huge wine lists, one for white and one for red, are mounted on their own trolley and wheeled to the table. While you consider the wine lists a little bush arrives at the table, on which hang caramelised olives which you pick.
Although this is an original presentation idea I found the sweet taste from the caramel a bit special.
There are no less than 2,800 separate wines available. We tried a Alion, it is the second wine of Vega Sicilia, whose Unico is one of the great wines of the world. Alion represents terrific value. 2001 is a particularly good vintage to drink since no Unico was made that year due to frost, so all of the grapes that could be salvaged that would normally make Unico went into the Alion.
A little Bellini cocktail appeared in a chocolate sphere; this was lovely, the peach taste coming through very well. This came alongside a little blob of rich chicken mousse sandwiched in-between two very delicate slivers of fried potato.A further nibble was deep fried anchovy bone with rice tempura, which was tasty and was made with very delicate batter, followed by an appetiser of mushroom brioche with hot meat consommé. The brioche had an incredibly light texture, a really remarkable piece of baking that practically melted in the mouth. Given the quality of the brioche, the consommé seemed merely pleasant, with fairly gentle taste and was not quite as hot as it might have been. This was followed by smoked caviar omelette, offered with a bonbon of pigeon liver with sherry spiced bread confit orange and pine nut cream. The rich liver flavour came through strongly and the omelette worked well.
The breads were made from scratch in the kitchen here and were impressive. The tray had a selection of white bread, ciabatta, multi-grain, olive bread, a particularly fine apricot and nut bread, brioche of olive oil and tomato and also brioche of black olive. The breads had lovely texture, and the flavours came through really well. European lobster was very tender and had excellent flavour, served on a bed of absolutely superb mash with truffle, with a rich black trumpet mushroom sauce. We had smoked langoustines, which were beautifully cooked, served with a lovely sauce made from the head juices, onion and Comte cheese, which had a fairly subdued flavour, which in this case was just what was needed as it allowed the delicate flavour of the superb langoustines to really shine;
My main course was a veal steak tartare, using veal from Girona. This was served as a rectangular slab, on which were dots of mustard ice cream, mustard leaves, spicy tomato ketchup, caper compote, Sichuan pepper, a little lemon compote to provide acidity, praline cream and dried of Olorosso sherry, with a garnish of little fried potatoes and smoked paprika; this was finally offered with a little pool of meat béarnaise sauce.
We had an excellent apple dessert, with apple in a series of styles and textures, with little leaves of crisp apple surrounding apple ice cream and Creme Catalan, which is essentially a Spanish creme brûlée, served with caramelised strawberries. This was creamy with a perfectly caramelised top, topped with wild strawberries, dried strawberries and strawberry syrup; this was simply magnificent. Followed by very good coffee and a selection of petit fours.
Yummy, yummy. We would say 10points.
Overall this was a superb meal, with great ingredients, high levels of technical skill on display, well judged flavour combinations and a pleasure to be here.
This is probably the best restaurant in Spain, and is one of the most fairly priced three star experiences anywhere in the world.
Besides star restos you will find everywhere great tapas and amazing sunsets.
Viva Espania.
The “House & Hotel” team was happy.
The press stay was supported by Meliá hotels.
Meliá Avenida America
