I heard from a few friends that a recent New York Times article had rated Calle Zurbano one of the writers’ “favorite streets in Europe.”  I remembered Zurbano; I had stayed in a hotel on the north side as my introduction to both Madrid and my teaching program.  While the people I met and the things I learned on Zurbano were of the highest quality, the street itself did not surprise or amaze me eight months ago. Nevertheless, my friend and I committed to revisiting Zurbano and seeing if anything inspired us. We stumbled upon inspiration.  Hidden in the article’s recommendations sits a tiny bakery hiding between ritzy hotels, bustling banks, and mainstream restaurants: María’s Bakery.

María’s looks like it crashed onto Calle Zurbano straight out of your Pinterest news feed.  The place oozes chic hipness–grey wood panels lead to off-white walls, chalkboard paint menus, reclaimed benches with homemade cusions, and wooden card tables covered in doilies and faux-70s tablecloths.  Like your Staten Island grandmother got a hold of a Paula Dean magazine.

The bakery’s eponymous María is apparently famous around these parts.  Locals pop into her ten square meters of space just to say hi, read her newspapers, drink her coffee, and grab a baguette or a pastry to-go.  Even the other staff know visitors by name, asking about babies or job lay-offs or who won the Real-Juventus match.

And, of course, there’s the food.  María and company arise before the sun to proof, knead, and bake the day’s glutinous goods. Pistolas, artisanas, croissants, cookies – all things line María’s stuffed shelves.  The cake selection includes dozens of decadent decisions: “Muerte por chocolate,” “mousse de Bailley’s,” “tarta de queso con salsa de mora,” even the oft-elusive “red velvet.”

Maria’s Bakery in Zurbano

As you get a high from the smell of bubbling yeast and caramelizing sugars, take a look at María’s eclectic selection of international sweets, like bonbones, alfajores, tarts, pasteles de Belén, dulces de leche, macarons, and much more.

However, a proper critic has to judge any bakery by the Spanish classic: pan con aceite, with a coffee.  Luckily, María’s does not disappoint, masterfully toasting its 8-cereal brown bread, complimenting its nutty savoriness with peppery Andalusia olive oil and ground rock salt.  Washed dow with frothy milk and brewed beans, it makes for a great breakfast deal around €2.

Stick around long enough and you’ll get to try some of María’snewest experiments.  While we crunched and munched our pan, we also were brought small plates of other samples, new treats that the bakery’s working on right now.  This season, María’s is toying with nut and oat hard crackers, thin biscotti to market as “light” for snacking clients.  To go with the recent holiday, we also tried María’s rosquillas de San Isidro, the listas covered in orange and lemon glaze, the tontas smacking of anis and cloves.

As we got napolitanas and medias lunas filled with dulce de leche to go, Erika told us from behind the cash register that we weren’t the fist Americans to visit; the New York Time’s “favorite streets in Europe” gave the bakery a steady drop of international attention.  Since then, Anglos amble around Zurbano, waltzing into María’s and placing their orders with a combination of gestures, grunts, and broken English.  While we laughed, I taught the staff how to say “home made,” hoping it would help guide our more linguistically ignorant compatriots.  If you’re walking down Zurbano and trying to see what all the fuss is about, give María’s a try.  It’s small, it’s strange, it’s out of place – and it’s adorable.

Info

Also check out:

Mama Campo – a restaurant/market of organic delights in Plaza Olavide

Harina – for something sweet or savoury

Pan Comido – a French bakery where our bread will most certainly be eaten all up

4 Coziest Cafes in Chamberí

On May 22 at 7pm, Madrid-based poet James Womack will be reading from his latest collection, ‘Misprints’ from Carcanet Press, at Desperate Literature – our favorite bookstore. Located near metro Santo Domingo, Desperate Literature sells quality books in different languages and holds delightful and free events like this one, always involving a few bottles of wine and some treats. So don’t miss it!

Here’s a full post of ours on Desperate Literature if you’d like to learn the story behind it:

Desperate Literature, for book lovers in Santorini, Brooklyn and now Madrid!

Maya is a new Mexican establishment, situated on C/Echegaray in Huertas. The owner & chef, Jose Manuel, hails from Mexico City.  Jose previously worked in the hidden burrito shop in Lavapies, notably wearing a customized chef’s hat. We met during his tenure there and became fast friends due to his approachable nature. After having not seen him in several months, I was taking a stroll through Huertas with a friend and we both noticed a Taqueria. She and I pondered whether it was new or had always been there. Jose surfaced and summoned us to the bar, inviting us to a drink in order to catch up and show us his new business endeavor. Jose’s grand ambition is to make quality Mexican products more accessible to consumers in Madrid.

Knowing that Americans are always on the prowl for new places to satisfy their taco cravings, I took it upon myself to do my community a service and sample a handful of Jose’s creations in order to share my findings.

First I sampled the taco de pastor, cilantro and onion with green lime.

The second specimen was Cochinita de Pibil with achiote.

The last taco was Fajitas Alambre de ternera

All of these treats were followed by a Tamale served on a plantain leaf.

They were all yummy, my favorite being the taco de pastor. I found everything about the establishment quite familiar. Their regular, a pipe-smoking elderly writer, took pride in presenting me with a poetry anthology that had his face on the back cover. This location is young, and thus the experience is quite personalized.  For those of you who are seeking a venue for your taco Tuesdays, or a place to find unique Mexican ingredients to be used in your culinary endeavors at home, I strongly recommend this establishment.

 Info

Also check out:

Best Mexican Joints in Madrid

Perdizione – a hidden hole-in-the-wall burrito bar in Lavapiés

Join Moveable Feast for this ‘farm-to-table’ inspired weekend in a finca in Almería, Andalucía, indulging in slowly cooked food, visiting local markets and taking siestas under the sun. Does it get any better than that?

Why join Moveable Feast?

Living outside your home country of course presents numerous challenges, i.e. getting to know people, the language barrier, culture shock and being away from your loved ones, just to name a few. Although one obstacle often gets overlooked – eating proper food.

Making a conscious effort to eat healthy is challenging when you have to translate ingredients and familiarize yourself with the food supply chain, and don’t forget hunting for spots that promote healthy and sustainable living. That’s way groups such as Moveable Feast are a Godsend.

What is it?

Sparked from reading an article about the Slow Food movement in the US, Jenny Pascual started Moveable Feast (also known as Move Feast) with her first farm-to-table event in January 2013, leaving her comfy corporate job in Manila, Philippines. With the mission of connecting those involved in all facets of the food supply chain – producers, buyers, consumers – and promoting sustainable, seasonal, community supported agriculture, Pascual’s passion project has reached the other side of the world.

When is it?

Next month from May 15-17, Moveable Feast will be hosting their first event in Spain at an Andalucian finca in Almería. Showcasing the local produce, cuisine and culture in collaboration with Oro Del Desierto and Unica Group. So if you sometimes find yourself tuned into Master Chef more than you’d care to explain, or simply indulge in menu del día’s all around town, Move Feast is worth the trip to up your food game.

Info & Booking

• Visit their sites: www.movefeast.com and Facebook

 What is the Festival of San Isidro? 

San Isidro is a citywide festival, pure and simple, but unlike San Fermín in Pamplona or Las Fallas in Valencia, it isn’t really a great source of local pride or identity for the city of Madrid. Many residents take advantage of the three-day weekend to travel elsewhere—often back to their hometowns—or to get a bit of Spring cleaning done in the spare time off work. This should come as little surprise. Madrid is the great Spanish melting pot, a cultural and economic center that pulls people in from across the country but never fully instills in them the type of local identity that underpins the more famous Spanish festivals. 

If anything, Gay Pride is the better candidate for Madrid’s primary festival. It certainly draws more visitors and press to the capital, and seems to adequately reflect the anarchic, welcoming nature of the city—one that shrugs off regional Spanish identity to embrace anyone who’s down to party.

But San Isidro does have its supporters. They’re mostly residents with deep family roots in Madrid, proud Madrileños who dress up in traditional garb to eat the classic food and dance the chotis in parties scattered throughout the central barrios. The festival has some of the cultural posturing of the “castecismo madrileño,” the Madrid castizo identity that’s proudly Spanish, built on the rejection of the bourgeois French affectations of the elite, and the feeling still stands.

I have a special affinity for San Isidro myself, partly because of the contradictions in it—a festival that both represents the soul of Madrid and couldn’t be further from it. The strong passion and utter indifference toward the holiday reflect the multiple layers of Madrid’s identity, at once a city and a collection of barrios, provincially Spanish and globally connected.

Or maybe we all just like beers in the park.

Great. Who the hell is San Isidro?  

Good question. Legend has it that one day, in the Moorish town of Mayrit (present-day Madrid), a day laborer named Isidro was ploughing his lord’s field when he miraculously caused a spring to gush forth from the earth, like a teenager hitting a sprinkler head with the lawnmower.

In another instance, Isidro saved his son from a deep well by praying to raise the water level, thus bringing the child floating back to the top.

These are several of his many miracles that would end up lifting this humble and devout Madrileño to prominence and eventual sainthood—a move spearheaded by the Spanish monarchs who had a particular interest in the miracle worker. King Phillip II himself was supposedly cured of a grave ailment by drinking the water that flowed from a spring that San Isidro found. San Isidro’s most famous miracles took place in Madrid and had to do with water, making this diviner, well-digger, and rainmaker the patron saint of both Spanish farmers and the city of Madrid. 

San Isidro doing his thing.

Today, in what we now know as the Pradera de San Isidro (a park in the Carabanchel neighborhood south of the center—metro Marqués de Vadillo) his miraculous springs still flow. A hermitage dedicated to the saint was erected in the area during the 14th century, then rebuilt in 1725 near one of Isidro’s famed springs, and believers still pay their respects and collect the healing water during the May festival thrown in his honor.

Uh-huh. So how should we celebrate it? 

While the festival historically takes place in the Pradera de San Isidro (a meadow in Carabanchel), it has since spread throughout the entire city. Activities sputter to a start during the week but officially kick off with the commencement speech (pregón) on Friday at 8pm in the Plaza de la Villa, attended by city officials and an invited celebrity—2016’s is the musician Santiago Auserón, a staple of the Movida Madrileña. The celebrations will last until Monday evening.

Top 10 things to do (2016):

1. Grab a guide and find what you like: The official San Isidro guide is the one true resource, praise be upon it.

2. Go to a free open-air concert: (Everywhere throughout the long weekend) There are many free open-air concerts throughout Madrid during San Isidro, including in the Plaza Mayor, Las Vistillas and Plaza de la Villa. On several nights at 9pm, for example, live classical music is played next to Templo De Dubod as the sun goes down. It’s worth seeing.  Again, the official guide is your best source here.

3. Have yourself a class picnic in the Pradera (Sunday 15th is the big day – Pradera de San Isidro, though there are also events on Saturday and Monday)  This is the most emblematic part of the festival. In fact, the picnicking tradition here has purportedly been around since the 1600s, and by the time Goya used it as the subject of some paintings in the late 1700s the tradition was already widely referenced. The pradera area has many stands with food and drink of all sorts, so you can bring your own or buy food down there.  It’s an all-around good time.

Picnicking in the Pradera. I took this with a scratched-up iPhone 3GS!

Warning: last year there were about 12 toilets stationed for the thousands of people at the Pradera, so be prepared to do the festival’s traditional holding-it-in dance.

4. Party on the street “Paseo de 15 de Mayo” (Primarily Sunday, the 15th, to a lesser extent Saturday and Monday / next to metro stop Marqués de Vadillo)  The San Isidro Festival has a very prominent “barrio” feel to it, and the neighborhood next to the Pradera de San Isidro (Marqués de Vadillo Metro) reigns supreme. They even named the major street that cuts through it after the date of the celebration, May 15th. Go here to drink wine and beer from the bars that set up stands along the street, then head onward to the Pradera for your picnic.

5. Check out the tacky/amazing carnival (Saturday, Sunday, Monday / Pradera de San Isidro): Like all carnivals, it has rides of questionable safety and hordes of roaming teenagers, but it’s a good time nonetheless. Last year I enjoyed playing the childhood favorite, “shoot the single-serving alcohol bottle off a shelf with a cork gun.” There’s also a ferris wheel that offers a good view of the city. 

Everyone’s favorite childhood fair game, “shoot the single-shot liquor bottles with a cork gun!” This was San Isidro a few years back. I won!

6. Party in Las Vistillas (Friday, Sat, Sunday, Monday near Puerta de Toledo, Jardin de Las Vistillas) This little park in La Latina plays annual host to another of the city’s “verbenas” (local parties), together with the Plaza Mayor and the Plaza de La Villa. The scenic gardens fill up with food stands, music, and people dancing the chotis. It’s usually one of the first things that comes to locals’ minds if you ask them about the holiday. (For acts taking place here, check the guide).

7. Drink Wine Under Fireworks/ Music in Retiro (Saturday and Sunday, 8:30pm/dusk): Bring a bottle of wine and a blanket, lay back and enjoy. 

Fireworks in Retiro, a photo I stole from the internet because cell camera is incapable of this.

8. Check out the bullfights: (Afternoons in Las Ventas) San Isidro is traditionally the beginning of bullfighting season in Madrid, and it’s actually the biggest bullfighting festival in the world. There are 24 afternoons of bullfights, including one specific day in which they all don Goyesco costumes, an event reasonably called La corrida goyesca. You can find schedules online and tickets for as low as 8 euros to some events. Others are quite popular and pricy, so get on those tickets ASAP if you’re into the bloodsport.

9. Watch the little Parade of Big-heads and Giants (Friday 13th at 6pm –Route: Plaza de Santo Domingo – Plaza de Callao – Puerta  del Sol – Mercado de San Miguel – Plaza de la Villa): This strange little parade has origins in the 16th century but was rediscovered in the 1800s—it marches larger-than-life figures down the main streets of the center of Madrid.  The giants are four pairs of monarchs who represent Europe, Asia, Africa and America. (Author’s note: I’ve never actually been to this, but it looks moderately interesting, very grammable.)

the parade (source: www.madrid.es)

10. Hit Up the Castizo Swing Festival in the Matadero (Saturday, May 14th, all day, The Matadero) The endlessly hip Matadero can do no wrong. There will be dancing, singing and general rabble-rousing throughout the day and into the night on Friday, with live musical acts.  Check their website for more details about the event.

10.1. Stroll by the Feria de Cacharrerías (Sunday Afternoon, Plaza Comendadoras in Conde Duque / Malasaña)  Go get yourself a nice clay pot or something. You deserve it. Here’s a good lowdown.

Thanks for the tips! So what’s typical of the festival?  

Traditional Dance: El Chotis 

The history of the chotis dance is surprisingly recent, arriving to the Spanish capital only around 1850 from Vienna, but it’s now considered a cultural hallmark of Madrid. You’ll see people dancing it on stages or in groups, particularly in The Pradera, the Plaza Mayor, or in Las Vistillas park. The men traditionally don’t move much at all, and it’s said you can dance it on a single tile. 

In terms of music, my person favorite chotis song, and perhaps the best known, is Madrid! Madrid! Madrid! I once saw an old man singing this passionately at a now-defunct karaoke bar off the Plaza Mayor. It was pure magic.

Traditional Clothing: El Chulapo 

The spirit of Goya’s Madrid is alive and well in San Isidro with some revelers dressing up like the 18th-century subjects of the famous Madrileño painter’s artwork, in a style fittingly known as “Goyesco.”  

You’ve probably seen little children running around these days in their traditional chulapo/ chulapa outfits. Kids and adults alike dress up in this 19th-century outfit and go to the major festival grounds around they city. They’re all adorable. If you’re anyone, you might consider buying yourself the traditional palpusa hat. I certainly might.

Chulapos y Chulapas (source: www.barullo.com)

Traditional Food: 

Rosquillas: Little doughnuts, sold mainly during the festival, usually made with olive oil and a slight anise flavor. There are different names for each type.

Las Listas:  rosquillas with powdered sugar on top.

Las Tontas: rosquillas without powdered sugar on top.

Las de Santa Clara: rosquillas with glazed sugar on top.

Las Francesas: rosquillas with glazed sugar and almonds on top.

Traditional food is sold throughout the pradera. Here are some olives I spotted.

Fritura de gallinejas y entresijos: fried hen innards (A festival favorite of tons of people!) 

Barquillos:  little cylindrical wafers, similar to an ice cream cone. The seller, known as a barquillero, dresses up in a chulapo outfit and plays a type of roulette on something that looks like a portable oxygen tank. If you win, you get two barquillos!

Cocido Madrileño: the typical dish that comes out any time Madrid is feeling local pride.

Encurtidos: skewers of peppers, olives, cocktail onions, etc. 

Vino en bota: a sac of wine. Like normal wine, but in a sack.

Clara con limón: Beer mixed with a carbonated lemon beverage.

Traditional Pilgrimage: Hermita de San Isidro 

This isn’t much of a “pilgrimage” considering it’s right next to the Pradera where you’ll be hanging out, but if you’re of a religious inclination and fancy stumbling over to pay homage to Madrid’s patron saint, be prepared to wait in an excruciatingly long line of mainly elderly Madrileños and devout Catholics at the Hermita de San Isidro. Bring a botijo to collect some of the healing water and memorize this traditional prayer to say when kissing the box containing his relics:

“San Isidro hermoso,
patrón de Madrid,
que el agua del risco
hiciste salir”

Hermita de San Isidro, the time of Goya and the time of Google Street View screenshots.

I want to whip out some interesting San Isidro facts while I sip a beer!

You do? Are you sure that’s wise?

You can start by listing all the rosquilla varieties, that’s fun. Make sure to not stop, even as people begin wandering away from you. You could also half-heartedly suggest a visit to the San Isidro museum, which occupies—in what seems to be a bit of a historical 6-degrees-from-Kevin-Bacon—a 17th-century house built on the spot of an even older house that once pertained to the Vargas family, who were the lords of the miraculous day-laborer.

If anyone accepts your offer to go, feign appendicitis and stumble away.

I need even more fun facts, I plan on partying the whole day!

Alright, settle down.

• The actual remains of San Isidro are kept in a prominent position behind the alter in the Almudena Cathedral, just in front of the Royal Palace in Madrid. 

       “Cool!”

• One of San Isidro’s miracles involves feeding pigeons from a bag of grain that miraculously replenished itself. 

      “Say whaaaa?”

• One of his miracles was getting an angel to plow the field for him while he just sat around praying. 

      “Clever!”

His wife is known as Maria La Cabeza (the head) because her head was kept as a relic after her death, paraded around by believers to bring rain to the dry countryside. 

“Quaint!”

• Someone in Queen Isabel’s court bit off one of his mummified toes in a religious fervor.

“Understandable!”

• Francisco Goya has painted several wildly different takes on the San Isidro pilgrimage and festival, including one in the grotesque style of his “Black Paintings” collection.

“Educational!” 

See? Look how much fun they’re having!

• The “Puente de Toledo” bridge (also known as the “Puente de Praga” due to its resemblance to the Charles bridge in Prague) has a statue of San Isidro performing the miracle of saving his son from the well. His son later died of other, non well-related causes.

“huh.”

That church visible from the Plaza Mayor as you walk down toward La Latina is called San Isidro church.

San Isidro church

 “How about we talk about something—”

“Rosquillas” is how they translate “donuts” in the Castilian version of the Simpsons, and, Dunkin’ Donuts is known as Dunkin’ Coffee in Spain, all because “Donut” was already a registered trademark in the country.

“Listen, I gotta go…”

I want some key vocabulary.

Verbena: a festival for a patron saint, usually with traditional dress and dancing. “This verbena rocks!”

Romería: a Catholic festival based on a pilgrimage to a hermitage or sanctuary. “This Romeria rocks!”

Botijo: clay jug-like thing to collect water from the sacred springs. “Whoa, sick botijo. Botijos rock!”

Chulapo/a: the name of both the people and the traditional costumes for San Isidro. “Hey, those chulapos rock!” 

Chotis: The traditional dance. “Chotis rocks!”

Goyesco: Goya-esque. “This all feels very goyesco, which rocks!” 

Rosquillas (la tonta, la lista, etc…): typical doughnuts. “These rosquillas are fine, I guess.”

Bota de vino: a wine recipient. “I shouldn’t have drunk that rockin’ bota de vino all by myself. How goyesco of me.”

Where to find it on a map — “Pradera de San Isidro”

<M> Marqués de Vadillo (line 5)

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=zGCIXzIDPGqs.kBmVv5oWRpGg&w=640&h=480]

Opened by two British men, Alan and Rick, Tuk Tuk is a low-key restaurant with two locations near Bilbao and Chueca. All their dishes are based on Asian street food recipes, particularly from Bangkok, Hong Kong and Saigon. With an international wait staff (many of whom are native English speakers) and a range of flavor-packed dishes (plentiful and affordable to boot), it’s no wonder why Tuk Tuk has become so popular among the city’s expat community and Madrileños alike.

Tuk Tuk’s menu features noodles, rice bowls, soups, curries and barbecued meat platters. Chock full of different types of vegetables and spices, your tastebuds get a mix of tangy, spicy, coconuty and sweet ingredients in every bite. Tuk Tuk can please any palate. And it’s vegetarian friendly, too.

You’ll find my favorite dish in the photo below: Babi Panggang (barbecued pork with a caramel-like glaze and thick soy sauce). It came on the Pat Pong Party Platter (€30), a great starter for a big group. Just look at the four dishes it includes:

I also like the mango and cucumber salad as an appetizer to share. As for main dishes, so far I’ve tried a soup, rice bowl and Thai curry. Although I don’t remember their names, I’d happily eat all of them again. My advice: just go in, run your finger down the menu and choose whatever you land on. You can’t go wrong!

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Web

Menu if you feel you need to prepare beforehand

Average price per person: €15-20

Tuk Tuk has two locations now, one near Bilbao and the other, Chueca:

<M> Bilbao: Calle del Cardenal Cisneros 6 |  Reservations: 914 45 91 80

<M> Chueca: Calle del Barquillo 26  |  Reservations: 915 23 25 56

More Asian restaurants featured on Naked Madrid:

• Ramen Kagura, Madrid’s (almost) perfect ramen bar
• Kintaro – Oy Vey
• Sumo – This Japanese restaurant’s name says it all
• Chuka Ramen Bar – Madrid’s hottest ramen restaurant
• Hattori Hanzo – Japanese food, straight up. No sushi.
• Nippon 2 – top quality yet affordable sushi, finally!
• Soy Kitchen – a fusion of Asian flavors
• Karachai – A cozy and elegant Thai restaurant in Alonso Martínez

This was the first vegan restaurant I’ve visited in Madrid and to this day it remains my favourite. Whilst the food is moderately priced, it’s certainly unique. And you absolutely have to try the sharing plate of vegan cheeses!

Rayen Vegano can get surprisingly busy, so make sure you come during early lunch hours if you haven’t made a reservation. Their menu changes daily and they offer homemade bread, cakes and, of course, fresh food.

Even their food changes daily – I’ve ordered ‘Brunchito’ twice and both times the plating was completely different, which is something I’ve never seen before, but it’s welcoming. The waitress speaks English (you can even get the English version of their menu) and the restaurant is extremely passionate about vegan ethics – it shows even through their wifi password.

Everything is cute here, from the little decorative touches on each table to the ‘Happy hour para perros‘ sign outside with a dog bowl full of water and their mission statement – “Change the world, become a vegan.”

And the best part? All vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the area support each other. In front of Rayen Vegano you’ll be able to find a bunch of business cards from other restaurants and shops along with information about meditation and yoga classes.

Info:

By Mandy Lutman 

From May 7th – 21st, the whole neighborhood of Lavapiés will be turned into a blank canvas. Over forty urban artists will be painting, spraying and setting up beer bottles on the streets, storefronts, traffic lights, you name it. This year’s edition of Madrid Street Art Project is the perfect excuse to head on over to Lavapiés, support local artists and enjoy Madrid at its finest. Plus some of our favorite places, like Swinton & Grant (featured in the photo), will be getting a nice makeover. So get out, walk the streets and check it out!

Organizers: C.A.L.L.E. Lavapiés and the Asociación Comerciantes de Lavapiés, an association dedicated to promoting local businesses.

In 2013, biologists Guillermo and Laura – Spain’s newest generation of olive farmers – took over the family business and embarked on an innovative mission: to connect the local countryside with the city of Madrid and make farming a sustainable way of life once again.

How it all started:

Over a century ago, in a small town in the region of Toledo, Guillermo’s great grandfather planted his first grove of around 200 olive trees, and between the evenly spaced olive saplings grew rows of sun-drenched grapevines.

A hundred odd years later, only the footprints of the old vines are visible, but the olive trees have grown beautifully gnarled and twisted, with silver miniature leaves and shiny hard fruit, ready for the annual harvest of some of the tastiest organic extra virgin olive oil in Spain.

The centenarian olive trees

Guillermo and Laura’s story:

Olive farming has been in both of their families for generations, inspiring them to study biology at university, which is where they met. From early on, they drew sketches on scraps of paper illustrating grand ambitions to re-bond our booming capital with its rural backyard, enthusiastically telling anyone who will listen about the genius that is the organic farming ecosystem (it’s genius).

By mid 2014, their dream had gathered enough steam for them to quit their jobs and make Proyecto Los Aires their life, and for being in the midst of an economic depression, it’s incredible how much they’ve already achieved.

The tour:

On Saturday, we headed out to their stunning olive grove in Arcicóllar, about an hour south of Madrid. When we arrived, we met up with our fellow tour buddies and set off on our educational meander through the olive trees.

Guillermo and Laura led us around their oldest plot and explained the process of creating olive oil: from planting and harvesting to filtering and bottling. Their scientific angle on the entire practice is fascinating, but I won’t say any more – the oohs and aahs are all part of the fun!

The walking tour begins

Taking a closer look at the trees

After the walking tour (and tanning opportunity), we sat down at a shaded table nestled idyllically among the centenarian trees. It was time for the tasting. This involved professionally sampling several olive oils in little blue glass cups, and learning how to tell the difference between generic supermarket oil and top-quality organic oil such as theirs.

And then came the food and wine. Through local connections and friends and family, Guillermo and Laura brought together a plethora of Iberian foodie gems for us to eat. A mercado on a table came to mind, and our tour companions’ similarly delighted reactions included lots of “mmm”s and “oh my God”s and jokey squabbles over who liked the pumpkin morcilla most. We chatted, talking about Guillermo and Laura’s endeavours as well as our own, then gratefully accepted Guillermo’s offer of a top-up of wine to accompany our final wander through the trees (and take a few grove-selfies). Finally, we had the opportunity to buy some of the delicious products we tasted that day.

The tasting (and eating and drinking)

The quaintest little market stall in the world

After an eye-opening and mouth-watering experience, we said our goodbyes to the lovely Guillermo and Laura and hopped on the bus back to Madrid, desperate to get the word out to you!

The project explained:

Proyecto Los Aires aims to promote local agriculture by running educational tours & tastings on their farm and forging a direct link between urban consumers and the rural economy. Their oil (Los Aires Extra Virgin Olive Oil) can be found in gourmet shops such as Oleoteca Murúa at Mercado San Antón. Guillermo and Laura also regularly sell their oil in markets across Madrid such as Mercado de Motores, Mercado Central de Diseño, Nómada Market and Gastro Market. Next time you’re there, go and say hello!

Los Aires olive groves

How to get there:

The meeting point for the tour is the bus stop in the town of Arcicóllar (see location here). Regular buses (see timetable here) will get you there from Madrid’s Méndez Alvaro bus station in just over an hour. If you’re driving, it takes around 50 minutes from central Madrid.

Details & Contact Info:

Tours run year-round on any day of the week or weekend and must be booked at least 48 hours in advance.

Facebook & Web

The website is in English and Spanish! For more information about the tour, pricing, and to book, click here.

From the 30th of April to the 10th of May, check out DocumentaMadrid – an international festival of Madrid documentary films. Get to watch more than 80 films in one of Madrid’s most prestigious cinemas — Cineteca in El Matadero Madrid (a former slaughterhouse turned cultural center).

Buy your tickets here.

Here’s a full post on the Matadero if you haven’t been!