Grupo Lezama's Café de Oriente in Madrid: Platos de Cuchara (dishes eaten with a spoon) and Other Dishes from Chef Pedro Quían; The Solemn Changing of the Guard at the Palacio Real; Celebration of Chinese New Year in La Plaza de Oriente

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When I was in Madrid in late November, early December, late January and early February doing interviews for a book on the career of Padre Luís de Lezama, the priest-restaurateur who founded the Grupo Lezama, which runs some 20 establishements--restaurants, hotels and cooking schools, I was privileged to eat many meals at his restaurants on the Plaza de Oriente.  

At Café de Oriente, one of the great platos de cuchara (dishes eaten with a spoon) is verdinas (young, green, flageolot-type beans) cooked with centollo (spider crab), a specialty of northern Spain, especially in Asturias.

Some days and nights, I went to La Taberna del Alabadero (see my report), but several days for lunch, Chef Pedro Quían invited me to Café de Oriente to sample some of his superb platos de cuchara, traditional dishes usually made with beans or garbanzos that are eaten with a spoon.  These are wonderful, hearty, winter dishes. that really hit the spot when the brisk, chilly wind that comes from the snow-capped Sierras de Guadarrama north of the city sweep through Madrid.  Sometimes it is said that the wind may not blow out a candle, but its chill can kill a man.  These delicious, classic platos de cuchara are life savers in the wintertime in Madrid. 

Pochas con almejas, Café de Oriente, Madrid.

Each day was a new adventure:  alubias con almejas, vedrinas con cangrejo, potaje de garbanzos, alubias de Tolosa con chorizo y morcilla, patatas a la Riojana, etc.  Along the way I sampled other dishes from Chef Quían's kitchen:  foie gras with fruit gelatins and purees, cured anchovies with green olives, croquetas de bacalao, pheasant, merluza with clams and some artfully constructed desserts.   Below is a slide show of some of the dishes I ate at Café de Oriente.  

Cafe de Oriente Platos de Cuchara and other dishes Nov 2010 - Feb 2011.
Photographs by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

Since I was staying on the Plaza de Oriente, at the Hostal Posada Real Manuel, above the Café de Oriente, I was able to observe and photograph life on the Plaza, day and night, and I was able to photograph the Solemn Changing of the Guard, which takes place only on the first Wednesday of each month, weather permitting, and not in the months of July, August and September or when another official event conflicts with the changing of the guard.  Below is a short slide show of the Solemn Changing of the Guard.

Solemn Changing of the Guard at the Palacio Real.
Photographs by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

On a beautiful, bright sunny February morning that was comfortably warm after several days of brisk cold,  I was waiting for the changing of the guard to begin when I heard  music coming from the Royal Theatre area on the far side of the Plaza de Oriente, near where the Café de Oriente is located.  Unbelievably, it was the Chinese expatriate contingent from Spain celebrating Chinese New Year at almost exactly the same time the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace was to take place.  Several hundred Chinese  wearing colorful costumes and carrying dragons that they danced along the parade route filed through the Plaza de Oriente and headed past the Senate toward the Plaza de España.  Slide show number three shows the Chinese parade celebrating their New Year. 

Expatriate Chinese New Year parade through the Plaza de Oriente in Madrid.
Photographs by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

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About Gerry Dawes and Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel  
Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. 

Dawes was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 
 

A trailer from a proposed reality television series with Gerry Dawes  
on gastronomy, wine, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

Chinchón I: A Day Trip with Padre Luís de Lezama, Feb 5, 2011

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A Series of Posts on Chinchón, One of my Favorite Towns in Spain

Text and Photographs
By Gerry Dawes©2011

 La Plaza Mayor, Chinchón. 

Chinchón I: A Day Trip with Padre Luís de Lezama, Feb 5, 2011

A day in Chinchón with Padre Luís de Lezama and his brother, Patxo. Convento de Las Clarisas, Castillo de Chinchon, a visit with Alfredo Freire, La Plaza Mayor and lunch at Mesón de la Virreina, owned by Padre Lezama's old friend, Tito Clemente.

Padre Luís de Lezama and his brother, Patxo, stroll down a street in Chinchón.

Chinchón has long been one of my favorite towns in Spain.  I first visited this wonderful town in 1971 with my old friend and art gallery partner, Edwin J. Mullens, III, from Clarksdale, Mississippi.  Over the past forty years, I have visited Chinchón many, many times and I have spent at least a dozen nights there.  I especially like to stay in this charming, romantic town with its 16th-century atmosphere the nights before I have to catch a plane back to the U.S. (Chinchón is less than an hour from the Madrid air terminals).   

La Plaza Mayor, Chinchón.

When I visited Chinchón with Padre Lezama on Feb. 5, it was almost 40 years to the day of my first trip here and,  ironically, we would have lunch in the very same place, Mesón de la Virreina, which is owned by the Padre's old friend, Tito Clemente.   

Mesón de la Virreina, Chinchón.

 
On that first trip, it was a very cold day, so we had lunch in the upstairs dining room next to the fireplace at a table near windows that overlooked La Plaza Mayor.   I still remember that I had alubias con chorizo (beans with chorizo), baby lamb chops, the local red wine (now from the D.O. Vinos de Madrid), café con leche and a brandy snifter of anís (anís liqueur) de Chinchón.  That day is still a cherished memory.  

Alubias con chorizo with guindilla peppers and the red Vinos de Madrid wine of Chinchón.

My lunch with Padre Lezama was also on a February day, but the weather was uncharacteristically warm (nearly 70 degrees F.) and the sun was shining.   It was a glorious day, so the Padre, his brother Patxo and I had lunch outside on the balcony overlooking the square.    

 

Padre Luís de Lezama with Chinchón behind him.

The Priest of the Bull Bums

Gerry Dawes is writing The Padre’s Tavern, a book about the life of Padre Luís de Lezama, once known as “el cura de los maletillas,” the priest of the bull bums of the Franco era.  (Parts of this article are excerpted from the book in progress and may not be reproduced without expressed written permission.)

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Frascuelo, the famous 19th-century matador who was a favorite in Chinchón.

Early on in Chinchón, a town an hour southeast of Madrid that is famous for festive bullfights held in its picturesque 16th-century Plaza Mayor, Padre Luís de Lezama, a Basque priest on his first assignment out of the seminary began befriending down-and-out maletillas, or bull bums, the itinerant teenaged would-be bullfighters, in the Spain of dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Early one summer morning in 1962, when he arrived at the entrance the 17th century Convento de Las Clarisas, where he went each day to say mass for the nuns, he found three maletillassleeping under the overhang of the entrance to the church.  This encounter would change the Padre's life forever.

Matador El Bormujano, one of the maletillas that Padre Lezama found sleeping 
at the entrance to the Convento del las Clarisas, an order of Franciscan nuns, in Chinchón. 

Slide show of A Day Trip with Padre Luís de Lezama, Feb 5, 2011.
(Double click to enlarge.) 
________________________________________________________________________________

About Gerry Dawes and Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. 

Dawes was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

 

A trailer from a proposed reality television series with Gerry Dawes  
on gastronomy, wine, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com