Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): El Mercat Bar De Tapas

El Mercat Bar De Tapas (***)

101 Gibbs Unit C Rockville, MD 20850

 
 

I think hubby and I have found our go-to Spanish restaurant in our part of Maryland. Olé! This place has it going on - amazing food, great service, nice decor, delicious cocktails, and decent prices.

Calamari, pan de tomate, and Spanish Spritz (basically a gin tonic). Although the Spanish Spritz was really satisfying, I wished the restaurant had more gin-based speciality cocktails especially since gin-tonic (or gin-tonica, or ginebra con tonic, etc.) is a popular beverage in Spain. Oh well, I guess you can't win them all.

 
 

Croquetas and papas bravas. All good in the hood with these two tapas.

 
 

Gambas al ajillo (shrimp with garlic). While this tapa was delicious, I was a bit disappointed that the shrimp were headless. I don't think that I've ever had headless gambas in a Spanish restaurant. Eh, I guess there is a first time for everything.

 
 

Seafood Paella with black rice. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture when it first arrived to the bar. Although this was very delicious, the Spanish hubby did not care for the green peas in the paella. He even sent a picture to his mom, and she was like WTF.

 
 

Martini de Granada. Ok, so I went a bit out of my comfort zone . . . I probably was feeling adventurous from all the gin tonics. While the cocktail looked pretty, the combined ingredients (orange vodka, pomegranate licor, egg whites, orange, and vanilla bitters) were an acquired taste for me . . . even though I do love egg whites in a cocktail. Like TLC said: don't go chasing waterfalls (in this case, new cocktails); please stick to the rivers and lakes that you're used to (in this case, gin tonics).

 
 

All in all, I have a feeling that we will visit this place a few more times over the next few months.

Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): La Malinche

La Malinche (***)

8622 Colesville Rd Silver Spring, MD 20910

 
Banner for La malinche
 

We tried to do something a bit different for a recent happy hour. I guess visiting this place wasn’t thinking outside of the box since this restaurant is next door to the other restaurant (J. Hollingers Waterman’s Chophouse, link to FPOTW entry: ***) that we typically frequent for happy hour.

La Malinche Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Marinaor Malintzin (c. 1500 – c. 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche, a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 by the natives of Tabasco. Cortés chose her as a consort, and she later gave birth to his first son, Martín – one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry) in New Spain.

-Wikipedian.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Malinche

Since the restaurant is described as Spanish and Mexican tapas spot, we decided to get a small spread of food that included patatas bravas, croquetas, boquerones (white anchovies, one of my favs), and mussels. Oh of course, we had beers and margaritas since it was happy hour.

a small spread of food that included patatas bravas, croquetas, boquerones (white anchovies, one of my favs), and mussels from La Malinche (Silver Spring, MD)

First, I’ll say that the service was very exceptional because the entire service staff was super friendly. Unfortunately, the food was not that great. Lemme clarify that. The food was not nasty or gross, but it just didn’t meet our expectations. Well . . . I guess it didn’t meet the hubby’s expectations. Since he is from Spain, he takes his tapas very seriously. 😉 I’ll cut La Malinche some slack because the patatas bravas were pretty good. When all the food came out at the same time (less than 10 minutes after placing our order), I had a feeling that food would not be amazing. We were right because the croquetas tasted like they were fried a few weeks ago and reheated in the microwave before arriving at our table.

If I visit La Malinche again, I’ll probably stick to the patatas bravas and the margaritas. While the food was not that great for me, I’ll say the restaurant has a very generous happy hour.

Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): Taberna del Alabardero

Taberna del Alabardero (***)

1776 I St NW, Washington, DC 20006

 
Taberna del Alabardero's awning
 

Since the hubby wanted food from his homeland, we decided to hit up Taberna del Alabardero in DC for brunch last weekend.

Boy oh boy walking into this restaurant really takes you to an old school bar/restaurant (i.e., taberna) in Spain.

 
Taberna del Alabardero bar area
 

Like most of our brunch excursions, we decided do brunch with bottomless cocktails. In additional to the $35 brunch (one starter and one main) menu, the restaurant offers bottomless red/white sangria, mimosas, and Bloody Marys (for an additional $18). Unfortunately, you have to stick to only one type of bottomless beverage. This was kind of sad because I wanted to have one rebujito – a typical beverage of sherry or white wine plus 7Up or Sprite. Oh well, next time.

Overall, the restaurant was amazing from the service to the food. However, I will say that the husband’s Spanish dishes that he makes at home are a little better. We had a lovely spread of food that included: huevos rotos con txistorra (eggs over easy with txistorra sausage), ensaladilla de atún (tuna & potato salad), patatas bravas (potatoes with a spicy mayo sauce), and pulpo (grilled octopus).

 
Huevos rotos con txistorra (eggs over easy with txistorra sausage) and Ensaladilla de Atún (Tuna And Potato Salad) at Taberna del Alabardero at Taberna del Alabardero
 
 
 

HA! I just realized that all of our plates were very potato-rich. I guess we can visit again when I need to carb-load before a half or full marathon.

The restaurant even gave the hubby a little treat for his b-day.

 
 

Random thought/question: Since this was a Spanish restaurant and the hubby has a Spanish name, I’m surprised they didn’t put Feliz Cumpleaños instead of Happy Birthday.

Since we were down to keep the party going, we decided to grab couple of scooters and hit up JR’s (on of our favorite LGBT post-Brunch bars).

 
Kwame and Pablo in DC
 

Fortunately for us, we arrived right before the deluge of rain, which took out a few trees in the area.

 
 

FOOD PIC OF THE WEEK

Since it was too hard to pick one favorite food pic or restaurant while vacationing in Spain, I figure that I would put my top meals in one post. This way, the next five entries “Food Pics of the Week” will not be food entries from Spain.

MADRID, PART 1

Bang Cook

Bodega Maribel

Santander:

La Casa del Indiano

Restaurant: ???

Restaurant: ???

Barcelona:

Restaurant ???

La Mar Salida

Madrid, part II

El Brillante

Going forward, I probably should take pictures of the restaurants’ names and menus so I can 1) know the name of the restaurant and 2) know the actual names of the dishes. I did try to check in to these places on Yelp, so they would be in my recently checked in folder. However, many of the spots we visited did not have Yelp listings, and I was not trying to create new Yelp listings for these places

Food Pic of the Week

Tomiño Taberna Gallega (***) 

192 Grand St., New York, NY 10013

The place has appeared on FPotW countless times, folks should know the deal:

  • A Galician (a region in northwest Spain) restaurant in the heart of Little Italy (or Chinatown depending on who you ask).

  • Amazing food

  • Great gin-tonics

Chuletón de ‘vaca vieja’:

 
IMG_0761.jpeg
 

Cigalas langoustines + Zamburiñas Bay scallops:

 
IMG_0760.jpeg
 

Torrija de bica gallega:

 
IMG_0763.jpeg
 

Food Pic of the Week

Tomiño Taberna Gallega (***) 

192 Grand St., New York, NY 10013

This place has made several appearances on here. Because of this pandemic, it has been a bit tough to check out new spots. I've been repeated many places because

  • many places are closed or do not have outdoor dining options;

  • if I have to wear a mask, load up on hand sanitizer, and eat outside during the winter, I want to go to a place that I know will serve up good food.

The hubby, one of his best friends from Spain, and I went here to celebrate Three Kings Day. Unfortunately, I was distracted by the events that were taking place in DC so I really did not take too many pictures of our food . . . and cocktails.

The plato fuerte - Arroz Caldoso

I wonder if the restaurant put three cigalas (Norway lobster) in the dish because it was Three Kings Day. You know, one cigala for each king.

fissh.jpg

In addition to serving yummy food from the Galician region of Spain, Tomiño has a wide array of gin tonic cocktails. After learning how much sugar is in tonic water (prob back in 2004), gin n seltzer has been my go-to cocktail. However, Tomiño uses tonic water (I forget the brand's name) that's typically served in Europe, which is significantly less sweet than the tonic water that we use here in the States.

 
gin tonic.jpeg
 

I think this one was the roses and juniper berry gin tonica.