Gran Via Eats & Treats

I traveled all the way here only to know it was CLOSED!

I received a hot tip for good Chinese food in Madrid from an Shanghainese IE University undergrad student a couple of weeks back. It's been officially a month into moving to Spain from Singapore, so I figured it's about time to reintroduce my palate to Chinese cuisine. I'd been looking forward to this day all week, since I've been eating Western food most of the time. I woke up early and made my way to Callao station, just a stop off Gran Via. A street later I was at Calle de Silva. I was headed to Ni Hao Chinese Restaurant for my Asian food fix... and when I got there, THIS (above) was what greeted me.

I was there at 11:45am... and strangely enough the operating hours indicated that they open at 12pm. Usually, for Asian stores, you'd see the restaurant staff scurrying around in preparation for opening. But.. no... not today. I peeped through the gated windows and it seemed as if the owner had a wild evening out and managed to get a serious hangover.

Disappointed, I walked back to Gran Via to look for alternatives. Well... as it turns out... I also stumbled upon a Japanese buffet place and this Indian curry house. And just like Ni Hao, they were closed / still getting ready. It turns out... business on Saturdays officially begin at 1pm. So now, I had an hour to kill. I grabbed a cup of coffee nearby and waited an hour longer to see whether Ni Hao would indeed say "Ni Hao".

If there are more Asians than Westerners eating here, then it's a good sign!

By the time I got in, a few tables were already filled with people. I grabbed a copy of the menu after guessing my orders shortly after (The menu was half in Chinese, half in Spanish~ great combo)! 

Kung Pow Chicken... well, almost!

Feeling the need to get away from the typical dishes I would order in the Philippines (which in this case would've been sweet & sour pork, beef & broccoli and yang chow fried rice), I opted for something else. I ordered kung pow chicken, garlic kailan and claypot eggplant.

The vegetables were downright accurate taste-wise. The chicken... well, it was a bit different. And it's primarily because the peppers used weren't the dried types. But.. well, it was pretty decent nonetheless. It wouldn't prevent me from going there again. But judging from the orders made by the other customers, it seems Ni Hao's steamboat / hotpot selection was more popular. Maybe I'll order that next time. And I'll likely bring an army with me (or a Hulk). That way I could order more stuff in the process!

With the change in season, comes a change in style (see all the bright-neon colors?)

Full, I returned back to Gran Via to check out some clothes. I came to Madrid a month ago with a half-empty suitcase. I intentionally did so because clothes here were cheap and that I wanted to blend in to the crowd as much as possible (I didn't want to stick out like a tourist / easy target for pickpockets). Spain is essentially home to INDITEX, which owns brands like Zara, Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti and Bershka. It's also home to Mango, Desigual, Camper and a host of other brands. And due to immense competition here, H&M also offers pretty good prices as well. So all in all, it's a pretty great place to shop!

From the sound of the paragraph I just wrote above, it seems as if I shopped like crazy. Well, actually, I just bought a pair of shoes from Pull and Bear. It's probably one of the best deals I've had here. I paid 29 Euros for a pair of blue sneakers (With brown laces). I told So about it on Facetime earlier... she was thinking it may have cost around SGD80 - SGD120. She was surprised to know that it cost SGD47! Amazing, seriously.

Mercado de la Reina~ located along Gran Via. An awesome place for food & drinks, without the tourist trap prices!

A couple of hours later, I was hungry. Well, not that hungry... but it was around 7pm and I wanted to have something light to eat. I found myself in Mercado de la Reina... it seemed like a nice, trendy place. I looked at the menu prices and went in after seeing it was reasonably priced.

Pulpo a la brasa con aceite oliva virgen y vinagre de Módena

Still recovering from a cold / coughs, I decided to stay away from the cheap wine and beer. Instead, I ordered fresh orange juice (by the way, orange juice is really great here in Madrid) and some tapas. 

In this case, as per the photo on the left, I ordered some grilled octopus coated in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, topped with tomatoes and bell peppers. Brilliant~ and possibly one of the tastiest things I've eaten here.

I also ordered chili peppers wrapped in anchovies~ don't order that. The anchovies were excellent.. but the preserved chili peppers were downright bitter. Ack! It really looked better than it tasted!

Deep fried artichokes. I didn't know you can do that!

My classmate who joined me here ordered deep fried artichokes. I've always had preserved artichokes on my pizza before... but deep fried artichokes? When the dish came, it looked like an onion, where all its layers were wrinkled as a result of the deep-fry process.

And wow~ it had an amazing texture. Just probably the same you'd get when you deep fry some dumplings / wantons. The dish was served with breaded egg plant squares and this very special sauce (sorry, I couldn't explain what it was made of. I'm still trying to figure out what went in it).

Anyways, it was a delightful dish. And it was a good thing that it's something that I could share. Too much fried food for one person will leave a bad feeling in your body later on.

This was the BEFORE photo.

Now, let me tell you about this drink I had.

While I was eating by the bar, I noticed that this waitress seemed to be pouring some cooking oil on a glass of ice. I say cooking oil because the container really looked like a cooking oil container (big transparent plastic tub) and that the color of the liquid, well, looked like cooking oil. She poured it into two glasses and served it to two customers behind me.

Curious, I asked her what it was and she showed me the label. I didn't fully understand what it was but I supposed it wasn't cooking oil. And so, I asked her to give me a glass of it. She poured me a glass, I took a photo of me with it and a took a swig of the drink.

IT'S THE WORST THING I'VE TASTED IN MY LIFE. It turns out, it was this mega-alcoholic drink. Actually, it was a bit like whisky, I think. It had so much alcohol in it that you could smell it by just putting your nose over the glass. Trust me, my face changed from the photo on the left to a complete sour-faced prune.I didn't bother finishing it. If I did, I would've died. Luckily, when the bill came, they didn't charge me anything for it. It was a house special and it was free for those who wanted it. In my mind, it's probably free coz nobody wants to buy it. Except maybe for those 2 idiots who got it too. Eeeks!

A great view of the flowering trees from the open deck of the Madrid City Tour bus

After that good meal at Mercado de la Reina I decided to take a tour bus. I still had 3 hours of sunlight thanks to daylight savings time and I wanted to actually see what else there was in Madrid. It turned out to be a good idea since I now know what monuments are side by side to each other. If any visitors come and visit in the future, I'd probably be a better guide by then.

Saturday was fun... so now it's time to spend Sunday reading up on case studies. Such is the life of an MBA student at IE~ haha.