A Most Unusual Trifecta - Tapas, Inbred Royalty, and Galileo

If you do only one special tour in Madrid, we highly recommend the Tapas, Taverns & History walking tour by Madrid Food Tours. Our wonderful guide, Joy from New York City, filled our bellies (with food) and our minds (with stories and history).

Yes, that is a young Matt Damon look-a-like.  More of him later.

Before we get started on the food, a little science and history.  This is the oldest statue of its kind - a horse on two legs.  The sculptor did not know how to do it and wrote to his friend, Galileo.  Galileo was currently under house arrest for saying the earth revolves around the sun and had plenty of time to answer.  He gave the sculptor three design points to keep the horse from toppling forward.  Do you know them?

Food yet to come:

Tapas restaurants typically have one or two dishes they do best.  Ideally, you go to one place for the tortilla, one place for the shrimp, etc.  If you don't know what to order, just see what everyone else is having and say "I'll have what she's having."

Stop numero uno, specialized in jamon ibérico (Iberian ham) on tomato bread.  Tomato bread is mana from Heaven and I don't even like tomatoes.  Grated tomatoes, with something wonderful mixed in, is spread on top of yummy bread.  Place the jamon on top and enjoy! Beside the ham, the taberna served fabulous olives.  I love olives and these were among the best.  At tapas bars, when eating something that has something to discard (ex. olive pits), you are to toss them on the floor.  To wash it all down -- sweet, red "miro" vermouth.

Spain is a pork country and whole pig legs are everywhere.  This goes back to the defeat of the Moors.  The Christian conquerers forced the Muslim Moors to eat pork to demonstrate they were no longer practicing Islam.

That's not to say you can't find beef as evidenced by this smoked, cured beef with shaved parmesan.

Have you had stuffed mushrooms?  How about escargot? Meson del Champiñon does mushrooms with garlic and olive oil and pieces of cured ham.  All served with Tinto de verano - red wine with sparkling water.  Basically, an alcoholic soft drink.

Note the two picks in each mushroom.  It is imperative to eat the mushroom without spilling any of the goodness inside.  This portrait of the owner demonstrates proper technique.  After raising the cap, you tilt your head back (like a baby bird waiting for the worm) and lower it into your mouth.

Matt Damon and I are preparing to partake. By the time we left that bar, we were all quite adept.  (P.S. This Matt Damon is a student from Ottawa studying abroad in Aberdeen.  He met his parents in Madrid.)

And what do you do with the picks?  Bars have been known to steal other bar's trash to show they had more, which means they had more customers.

This place takes their mushrooms so seriously, they even have them growing on the ceiling.  Since the ones we ate were smaller than these, I assume we did not have "ceiling food," but you never know.

Off to the shrimp place ...... Once again, this proved you can never have too much garlic.  Patti from Chicago and I are deep in conversation.  That did not keep me from eating too-many-to-count pieces of bread with the garlic shrimp.  In less than three days, I am already in diet trouble.

Last stop was a lot of meat. From left to right - pork shoulder, lamb intestines, lamb sweetbreads, lamb kidneys, and Pimiento de Padron.  The intestines were deep fried and not bad.  Those little peppers? Those babies are served fried with salt and pepper and addictive.  The catch is they are quite sweet, but about 1 in 10 are hot.  You never know when you'll get one of those.

Things we learned:

1. Don't let your cash stash get too low.  Credit card functioning is haphazard.
2. "Pre-Columbine" is another term for "Pre-Columbian."
3. Never say "no" to tomato bread.
4. Three design features to keep the horse statue upright:  Have a hollow chest, a solid rear, and three points of contact. In this case, it is the back two legs and the tail.
5. Castilian Spanish has a lisping pronunciation.  This goes back to Charles II (1661 - 1700).  The Spanish royals were extremely inbred, probably more so than other royal families of Europe.  He had deformed jaw and a very large tongue, not speaking until he was four.  It is thought he had lisp and the courtiers began to speak with one so that he would not think himself different.  And it stuck.

The artist most probably painted him in as flattering a way as possible. Charles II was not a handsome guy.  In addition to having physical and mental deformities, he was also infertile and produced no heirs.  Thus ended the House of Habsburg line of Spanish royalty.  The House of Bourbon followed. The current king, Felipe VI is of the of the House of Bourbon.

Later ... our museum day.  It involved a LOT of walking.  After all the eating, we probably need several days like that.