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THE BAROQUE ART OF SUCKLING PIG STACKING AND A RANCID SHOPKEEPER












barbers
Botin
Casa Alberto





by M.E. Romero


I've just come back from a visit to Madrid, a city I only discovered 2 years ago. An embarrasing fact given that I was born there ( by chance as my parents spent only a few years there) and I've lived many years in another Spanish city, Barcelona, close enough to allow many week-end breaks but, as it's often the case, one knows better other countries than one's own.



Madrid has been a pleasant discovery and very timely too. If I had known this city some years back when I was younger and easily dazzled by all things "designer" I would have dismissed it perhaps as a little rancid and passe. As it is, after 20 years living in London and a few less in Barcelona and having experienced the devastatingly bland effects that themed businesses bring about in the name of gentrification, it was a wonderful experience. I found myself realising that the uniqueness of Madrid lies in being able to find glimpses of long gone normality, right in the city centre. By normality I mean small shops that are useful to the community like non-designer butchers or fishmongers, a bar selling calamares sandwiches with not a branded package in sight, or a little shop selling bras and knickers and all sorts of ladies underwear accessories, even garters. Not from a "sexy vixen" style shopfront or from a budoir style interior but from an authentic early 1900's wooden shopfront complete with original etched glass door , perky brass bell announcing visitors and rancid shopkeeper dressed to the nines and topped with a cloud-like maroon hairdo and full make-up.



The centre of the city, around Santa Ana square, is a collection of small – mostly pedestrian – pretty and unassuming streets packed with little gems like a vintage barber shop or the deli bursting with mouth-watering products displaying dozens of different cheeses, cold meats and pates which I couldn't help to visit. It was the sheer beauty and simplicity of its shopfront and interior, covered with old, faded tiles and painted tiles showing seductive ladies holding products so en-vogue in the twenties and now long gone that attracted my attention. A handful of small marble-top tables and an inviting shop-owner couple were the prelude to the best mixed leave salad that I've ever had. An abundant amount of pear carpaccio and Cantabrian goat's cheese sat covered in a drizzle of orange and honey dressing on top of a mountain of fresh, crisp and flavoursome leaves, yum! For seconds, a cold salmorejo ( a gazpacho like summer soup) – big enough for two – was served with crunchy croutons. A couple of huge Ribera del Duero red wine glasses later and the best was yet to come...the bill, it was so low that it required a second take, at 18 euro I found myself counting the times I've been ripped off before ( still counting two weeks later).



Heading towards the Plaza Major I bumped into the oldest restaurant in the World, Casa Botin. I headed towards the door which was promptly opened by a smiling waiter – a rarity in Barcelona. The main rooms date from 1725 and the basement from 1590. The waiters invited me to look around. I was attracted to a large hatched door, it's top half was opened framing a vision that carried me beyond reality. The walls of a small room were covered in shelves, on top of them there were terracotta dishes, each of them containing a spatchcok suckling pig roasted to a honeyed glow that matched the light of the room. In all its goriness it had an artistic baroque feel to it and I was transported to Hieronymus Bosch's painting The garden of Earthly Delights and to be more precise to its right-hand panel representing the lugubrious precincts of Hell in which the damned souls are being submitted to all sorts of torments. I saw the cook handling a long oven pole at the end of which was a smiling piglet lying spread-eagled inside a furnace, oblivious to its torment.



I walked out into Madrid's fierce July sun inspired and ready for an ice cold beer.



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