I’ve already told you that I get very anxious when something big related to food happens near me. Tapas Picadillo contest is always a good example. I even get to the point where I hate the contest for existing and making me take such hard decissions. And always the same question in my head…which tapas shall I try this year?

This time I decided to take it easy and make a “small” selection of the tapas that I needed to try, the tapas I should try and the tapas that I’d propably won’t have the time to try. It’s tough and feels awful, but the contest lasts 2 weeks and I can’t really spend my days eating tapas, or can I?

The winners have already been announced and one of them is from a restaurant I never miss, Cúrcuma. I couldn’t try it this year because it was mainly cheese and I was on the week before to a very nice gig in Madrid, so I couldn’t risk it eating too much dairy. A pity, indeed. But life goes on.

I’ll start from the beginning. The firt day I started with Las Viudas Cheese Bar (previously known as La Mejorana) Yes, it is a cheese bar. Nevertheless, their tapa had no cheese.

Avocado tartar with smoked sardine. This year’s contest seemed to me like the “Sardine & Pork Cheek year”. It looked like every other place had one of the two ingredients. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the first tapa and thought the sardine was well smoked with a nice texture. Of course the avocado was a great companion.

Appart from that, they offered a complimentary tapa, a mini “bollo preñao” which is a piece of bread dough filled with chorizo that is then baked in the oven. I asked them if they did their own bread because it was amazing, and they told me they did with their own sourdough. Extra points for that. Also, really nice staff.

Second place, La taberna de Alia. They didn’t have one of the tapas (tuna tataki) when I went there, so I decided to go other day. Actually, I couldn’t try it in the end. So sorry.

Third place, Central Park. They told me they’d been winning for a couple of years in a row. I had never been there before and felt excited to try it, especially after they told me about their winning streak.  There were two tapas. One was quail egg filled with Cuban rice on a plantain nest.

The other tapa they had was chicken toast. They served chicken breast and thigh with two different wines (a younger wine for the breast and an older wine to enjoy with the stronger part of the chicken) all of it accompanied by perfectly cooked crispy chicken skin.

It was obvious they’ve put a lot of thought on both tapas and the ideas were really enticing. I would have loved the eggs if they’ve had a bit more flavour. When you eat Cuban Rice, it’s normally full of flavour. It felt like in the process of the creative reconstruction, a bit of that went away.

I really enjoyed the two different wines with the two different parts of the chicken. The skin was really nice, as I said. It was a very small tapa so it was a bit difficult to differenciate the textures in the chicken.

To finish the first day… A Factoría Verde, a vegan restaurant. I didn’t even know it was there. And, Oh MY! The best tapa I ate in the contest was a vegan chorizo with chimichurri. It was the nicest thing of the first day and I dare say their other tapa was one of the nicest too.

You know I’m not a vegan, but this family business (because they also have a shop with incredibly great products) have a great chef. His vegan chorizo with chimichurri made clear he had Argentinian roots. I want to have my fridge full of these chorizos, really. They added some red cabagge that tasted a lot like ginger (in an awesome way) and some potatoes. There you go, the best tapa and it was vegan. Let’s shut all those anti-vegan people, they need to meet a good vegan cook.

The other tapa was three raw vegan rolls with lineseed, hempseed and other good stuff. They filled them with three different salad-like fillings that tasted very different. Actually one of them on its own was a bit bland, but when combined with the thin veggie paper it was perfectly balanced. Very light and nice. I would definitely eat that again. Actually, we ordered one more chorizo tapa, instead of going to a different place.

Afterwards I went inside and bought some nice things on the shop: vegan sobrasada (wow, it was really good), nopal juice, vegan jerky (the first good one I try) and Roo’ bars among others.

Another day and many different experiences awaited. Although…it was the same day and only a couple of hours had passed.

Oído Cocina is one of my favourites since I tried a couple of years ago a Smoked Salmon and Cebreiro Cheese Macaroon. That was my winning tapa in 2015. Every year, I go there to try their new inventions for the contest. I also eat there in between contests, but they are on my priority list when it comes to choosing which ones I visit on my Picadillo tour.

This year again, both were great. The Pepitoria Chicken was nicely done, and the texture was incredible. But I’m a terrine person, so they won me with their…“What’s up, doc?” A trio of carrots infused in different flavours (ginger, mint and lime, if I remember well) with rabbit paté and nicely chopped black olives. It looked like carrots on the ground. Like a tiny edible garden. Chapeau for the idea, the flavour and the execution. I loved it. Also, I want to say the Galician bread they serve is the best. I always think about it when I eat there. Another one of my favourites together with the vegan chorizo.

Next place was Abica with a Marine taco and Pork Cheek with potato cake. Although I didn’t really enjoy the taco that much (I think it tasted a lot like squid, and I wasn’t really into that, that particular day) But it looked really beautiful and it seemed like they put a lot of though on the dish, so probably it was just me.

I thought the pork cheek was perfectly cooked and had a really nice flavour. The sauce was juicy and sweet, which went really well with the potatoes and complimented the fat and moisture from the pork.

Two more places and I think I should leave the rest for another post.

The next one was Calaverita Bar I’ve just read they’are closing today. So it’s sad to see them go. One of the tapas was smoked salmon with fruit. Very refreshing after all that food I had that day.

And, of course there was pork cheek in this one too hehe. This one was a bit different though. The cook told me she took the recipe from her mother-in-law. I really liked it had walnuts in between the meat.

And last, was A Peixería. Peixería means fish market in Galician, so everything they served was fish-based. I went with my parents and he’s not very fond of cooked fish. Anyway, one of the tapas was raw fish, and he liked it.

I liked it too, most of the ingredients were great, but I think I would have rather eat it without the toasted maize snack. I think I had too much one day and now it feels really heavy whenever I eat it. Not their fault, neither mine…those snacks are really addictive.

The other one was battered hake with roasted green peppers and a nice sauce. Simple, traditional but really nice and comforting. The texture of the hake was as it should. It tasted good and was a nice ending for a long, fat day.

And I can’t really keep talking about food right now, so I’ll continue on my next (predictably really long) post.

Have fun and keep fooding!