Fifth time’s the charm

What’s a typical restaurant search like with my family?  Well, it usually involves no fewer than 4 different places, which we analyze over and over, weighing the menu options for everyone’s specific diet and/or food preferences.  And it almost always takes half an hour.  Minimum.  Add in two extra people and that brings the search time up to an hour. 

Didn’t end up here.

 

Or here.

 

Or here.

 

But there are certainly worse places to be browsing than Madrid’s Plaza Santa Ana. 

We finally made ourselves comfy in a wine bar.

 

Don’t be deceived by the hole-in-the-wall exterior.  Vinoteca Barbechera has a nice, clean feel inside with the barrel tables and walls of wine bottles. 

 

We passed the bar and made our way to the back. 

 

 

Normal people would probably get vino when in a vinoteca, but we are not normal.  So we got two different jars of sangria.

 

I couldn’t actually tell you what was what, but I remember loving the fizzy one a LOT.  Of course, the regular sangria was great too. 

 

Tres amigas. 🙂

 

How cool is the table with it’s glass surface over the barrel!?  We oh so generously added a few US coins to the collection of international money between the glass.  Laura slipped in some Peruvian soles from her former South American travels (thinking she’d never need that currency again).  Funny thing is, six months later she is now back in Peru.  And given her recent border issue, it seems she probably could have used that extra cash. 

 

Me and the fam.

By the time we reached the bottoms of the jarras Alene was about to fall off her barstool (she blamed jet lag), but the rest of us were in the groove.  Dinner time!

Restaurante Taverna Vina P was just a short commute across the plaza.

We staked claim on a big table at this place prior to getting drinks because when you are traveling with a group of seven, it’s wise to get reservations in the popular parts of town.

We ended up sitting inside, though, which wasn’t what we were expecting (the whole point of putting our res in advance was to get a good people watching slot in the plaza, but oh well).

  

We started with bread and wine.  The basics.  There was a brawl over the bread because we all wanted multiple pieces – another hazard of traveling in big groups. 

Looking at the menu, I noted how minimal the the vegan options were.  Hmmm…good thing I wasn’t too hungry (I had a Larabar between the Thyssen museum visit and pre-dinner sangria).  My mom and I decided to share a few dishes. 

 

Gazpacho.

Grilled asparagus (with the ever present blob of mayo).  These were delightfully salty spears. 

Vegetable soup.  The reason there’s so much spilled soup has nothing to do with my eating habits.  Our waiter was adorably ancient – he was pushing 90 years old if I had to guess – and when he was serving us our food his hands were shaking uncontrollably.  It was so bad it made me slightly uncomfortable (do I offer to help?).  Our other waiter was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum – young and post-nose job (rocking a split a la MJ). 

House salad.  You can’t really tell it’s size from the photo, but this bowl was massive (which very much surprised me).  So maybe iceberg lettuce isn’t my first choice, and whole radishes definitely aren’t my favorite, but you make do.  In the end, I was pretty pleased with my meal.  Hanging out with my family and friends is really the only thing that matters anyway.