What is it about Madrid that hates Bloody Marys? Even though we had already planned to go to Max Madrid for brunch and Bloody Mary, because it’s the only place we can find a Bloody Mary and besides serves great food, we set off early for our last walk around just to see if we could find another source of our fascination.
Not to be.
We checked in at few places that looked promising, but nothing. It’s not that Max Madrid makes a bad one, it’s just that they are about the only place we can find in Madrid that makes a Bloody Mary at all. Even the cerveceria that shows a picture of a Bloody Mary on their drink menu doesn’t make one.
So at the stroke of 13:00, we walked into the completely empty Max Madrid and plopped ourselves at the bar for our chosen Sunday beverage. I consoled myself that as late as it was for us, it was only 7 a.m. in New Orleans. (Daylight Saving Time ends a week earlier in Europe, so for this one week, New Orleans is only six hours behind European Central.)
As before, Max Madrid made a most excellent Bloody Mary, after my urging to splash mucho mas brown sauce (Lea & Perrins) into the mix.
After we savored our Sunday ritual, we asked for a table to eat brunch/lunch or whatever they call the meal at 14:00 on Sunday. They graciously seated us at a corner table tucked way far in the back room. Within minutes, we understood why they parked us back there. The entire restaurant filled to capacity in a half an hour with large families, young couples, old couples and older ladies.
Max offers two levels of menus on Sunday, one for 16 and one for 20 a person. That includes two courses, dessert, coffee, wine or beer, water, bread and whatever else they may bring to your table. We ordered what we thought would be more reasonable, a split tapas of ham and cheese croquettes and one entree each.
That was a good intention, but the portions were gargantuan. My black linguine with frutti de mare was loaded with fish, whole octopus, squid, shrimp and mussels swimming in a rich sauce that was truly the fruit of the sea. I picked out every morsel of the frutti de mare, but there was still a half-bowl of black pasta left to be consumed. But not by me. Lynn’s dish of risotto and prawns with slices of orange was not quite as much to her liking as some other dishes we have enjoyed at Max Madrid but no less large. She could only finish about half herself.
The waitress came to clear our plates and wondered if we did not like the food. All I could do was grab my belly and groan “mucho grande.”
We had used our last of our Metro ticket going up the hill, so we waddled out of Max Madrid to walk downhill back to Lavapies and the party we knew would be raging when we got there.
Somewhat nostalgic already, we took the last walk down Calle Olivar past the landmarks that have become so familiar to us in the last two weeks. The tattoo parlor, the Attak gay nightclub , the renovation trash chute all become your bread crumbs home after a while. We had done the same thing earlier this year in Venice, which is notoriously confusing to get around.
Plaza Lavapies was indeed in full swing when we reached the bottom of the hill , but we were a bit disappointed to see no bands playing. Maybe the TapaPies festival that has been going on the entire time we have been in Madrid has closed down. Looking for our last experience in the ‘hood, we popped into the packed PortoMarin cerveceria for a last glass of wine in the crowd before heading up to our apartment, but not before walking past a group of Africans playing drums and dancing with an elderly lady who was grooving to the beat.
It was get-away day, so back home for a last bottle of wine, dinner of leftovers and packing for the trip to Barcelona tomorrow. Adios Madrid. We love ya.