marcp_dmoz / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Every city has its monuments and museums, those government-ordained landmarks or sites that are supposed to make us eager travelers stop and stare.

I recently took a trip to Spain, and upon arriving in Madrid, I was told by locals that the capital was not a town for such wide-eyed wonderment. Sure there was the expansive El Prado and the historic Plaza Mayor – scene of many a Spanish Inquisition – but those were day trips, and there was no truly great architecture to behold. Even the attraction’s nickname is the resolutely uninspiring “The Forum.” Go to Barcelona they said, with its Catalan eccentricities, or the beaches in the south.

Madrid needs no such historic or architectural buttresses, though they do in fact exist. Madrid’s monument is its leisure culture, epitomized in its dining and echoed hundreds of times over in the multitude of restaurants that populate the area. Echoed, of course, because the truly wonderful thing about dining in Madrid is not just the prevalence of eating establishments, but the great and casual opportunity to experience any and all of them. That’s due in large part to the culture of tapas.

A way of life

You may be familiar with tapas culture in the U.S. Typically, it’s 1/4-sized portions of food served in the US.  Eating out in Madrid starts around 8 or 9p.m., and should go for hours, the idea being that you eat at your leisure. Enter an establishment, get a drink and a small plate of food to share, eat it, and then stay or wander to the next place. The drinks are often only a euro or two, and the tapas will often be given to you for free. Assortments of steak, ham on bread, cheeses, gazpacho, fish and nuts are all offered to you. It’s the kind of dining indicative of a city that relishes its free time, where work ends for everyone at five and weekends are for staying up throughout the night.

chusoart / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

The epitome of this wanderlust cuisine is Cava Baja (or the low cellar), a street lined with bars and restaurants just off of Plaza Mayor. I spent many warm summer nights strolling the quarter-mile stretch, keeping lookout for deals and interesting dishes. The beer is usually light and ham is often the offer of the day. It was there that I tried my first octopus, and an amazing gazpacho sprinkled with herbs and bacon. The dishes were delicious and refreshing in the heat, but what made them exceptional was not just the food – it was the casual atmosphere. I fondly remember 6 Cava Baja, a hole-in-the-wall with a ham leg mounted on the wall, ready to be carved, and a bartender happy to hand out dish after dish without even asking. Yet I might have tried 4 restaurants in a night, and countless more while in El Foro.

So while you venture to the culture of madrid, make sure you indulge in the cuisine!