SALA DE DESPIECE: A $45 TASTING MENU AT A TRENDY MADRID RESTAURANT?! YES, MA’AM
The Cost -$45 per person
The Atmosphere – Sala de Despiece 2, also referred to as SDD2, is not your traditionally arranged restaurant. Made to look like a butchering room, the long, narrow restaurant doesn’t have any individual tables and all diners eat on a long, stainless-steel bar with counter-height seating. Metal meat hooks hang from the ceiling and are cleverly used to hang purses and handbags while butcher knives in glass cases adorn the walls. The restaurant’s industrial-chic décor is fun and unique and when you add in the loud, upbeat music, it really makes for an amazing place to go with friends before a night out on the town. Reservations are accepted and are highly recommended as you likely won’t get in without one. We suggest wearing something trendy and fun like a going-out outfit.
Sala de Despiece 2 is one of two locations of a trendy new Madrid hotspot serving up modern Spanish dishes with European, Latin American, and Asian influences in unique ways. Located just off Gran Via in a heavily trafficked area of Madrid, the restaurant has both a la carte and tasting menus and while there are many wine and beer options, there isn’t really a cocktail list. With tapas-sized a la carte dishes ranging from about $6-$19 dollars each, the tasting menu, which comes with eight courses, seemed like the right choice as it enabled us to try a good portion of the 28-dish menu in a curated way. It also gave us the opportunity to see many of the restaurant’s tableside preparations as each course is at least partially prepared in front of the diners, giving you the opportunity to learn more about the food you are eating while seeing how it is made.
The Order – Tasting Menu (8 Courses).
The Fantastic – The best dish of the evening was the Arenque Ahumado, or smoked herring. It started with two tubular pieces of Chinese eggplant which were sliced open at the top. Then the chef inserted onion puree, salt, pieces of smoked herring, and pickled onions before shaving on fresh horseradish pieces and finally finishing the dish off with a transparent pickled cucumber and mustard seed sauce. But it wasn’t only a fun presentation – the arenque ahumado really stood out for its wonderful combination of flavors that led to exceptional bites. The smoked herring combined nicely with the onion puree and the sauce really did a lot to bring the dish together and add another layer of flavor to the already wonderful dish. The arenque ahumado would not have been a dish I would have chosen myself, so it made me extremely glad that we opted for the tasting menu.
The Great – Now let’s go back to the start of the tasting menu with a dish SDD2 calls The Rolex. Consisting of an egg yolk that is placed in the center of a long strip of pancetta, the dish started off in the shape of a watch at the table in front of us. However, it didn’t stay that way for long as the ends of the pancetta were brought up over the egg yolk to wrap it around. It was then cooked right in front of us for about ten seconds using a tiny flame torch before it was presented to us to eat in one bite. The Rolex had a really nice flavor to it despite it being mostly egg yolk but between the taste and the presentation, it was a great way to start the meal.
Next up was the Chuleton. Out came a tray with portions of beef carpaccio surrounded by small piles of ingredients. First, the preparing chef used a knife to push salt around the meat. He then took the pile of truffled mushrooms and black olives, followed by the pile of fresh tomato puree with basil and garlic, and mixed each one in individually. Next, he rolled up the meat into a small, one to two bite piece and served it. Though it was a bit heavy on the salt, it had a nice flavor which was highlighted by the truffled mushrooms. The most impressive thing is that this dish was prepared in front of us in a matter of seconds and though it must have taken more time than that to prepare the tomato puree and truffled mushrooms, the power of a basic combination of fresh, high-quality ingredients was on full display here.
Skipping a couple of courses (the flor de calabacín described below and the arenque ahumado described above) brings us to the Pavía de Bacalao, a play on a tapas dish found in Madrid and Andalusia often called solditos de pavía. SDD2’s version of the dish had a good-sized piece of deep-fried cod that was cut in half. Pil-pil sauce, a Spanish sauce made from cod, garlic, and olive oil, is then applied on top. Following that, a large, long roasted red pepper from Palermo that was cooked with onion wine was cut open, the seeds were removed, and the pepper was quartered and laid over the line of pil-pil sauce on each piece of cod. A final bit of pil-pil sauce was added on top as a final touch along with some black salt. The cod wasn’t anything special (it tasted like an average fish and chips, sans the chips) but the pil-pil sauce and the roasted pepper really elevated this dish while the onion wine really gave the red pepper a unique, fun alcohol-forward flavor.
After the bacalao came the evening’s main entrée, Lomo de Vaca. There were three slices of beef for each person served with a sauce made from the fat of the meat, olive oil, aromatic herbs, chiles, and sweet garlic. The sauce’s ingredients were mixed and then flame torched table-side and while the meat was good enough to eat without the sauce, the option to dip was nice. The dish also came with a side of Canary potatoes in a sauce made from butter, anchovies, and chipotle. They had a great taste to them, but they were not served hot enough. Overall, though, this was a solid way to end the savory portion of the meal.
There were two desserts served as part of the tasting menu and the Helado de Pimienta was the better of them. This dish was prepared table-side and started with a thin layer of cotton candy on top of which a mix of peppers was freshly ground and sprinkled. Then a full stick of butter was unwrapped from foil and placed on top of the cotton candy – at least that is what they wanted you to think. What looked like a stick of butter was actually pepper ice cream that was so cold that it was solid enough to place on top of the cotton candy, which was then rolled around the stick of ice cream. The dessert was then cut into four cubes, two per person, and topped with a homemade strawberry sauce and a black peppercorn before more black pepper was ground on top. The creativity here was really exciting to watch and it was one of the most, if not the most, entertaining preparations and presentations of the meal. The dish also tasted great with the strawberry jam and cotton candy standing out for the right reasons. The only thing that held the helado de pimienta back from receiving our Fantastic rating was the helado (ice cream) itself; unfortunately, the pepper ice cream just didn’t have a very peppery taste to it and it really could have used more of that flavor to help balance the sweetness from the ice cream, the strawberry sauce, and the cotton candy.
The Good – The meal ended with the other dessert, the Flan de Queso, which was served with fresh berries and caramelized pine nuts. While this dish was a little more interesting and tasted better than the average flan, it did not compare to the dessert before it and was a bit of an underwhelming way to end such a fun and exciting meal. It was satisfying but it wasn’t something I would order a la carte at SDD2 given the options on its menu.
The other dish that received our Good rating is the Flor de Calabacín. When it was time for this course, two trays were brought to the table: one with two squash blossoms per person and the other with multiple globs of each of the three sauces that went along with them. However, if you thought you were going to be able to dip your squash blossoms into the sauce of your choosing, you were wrong. The preparing chef grabbed a transparent rectangular piece of plastic, pressed it vertically against the table, and then swept it across the tray, blending the three sauces together in a very artistic-looking way. The sauces, a parmesan, a beetroot wine, and a burnt tomato and onion, blended nicely and while I wish I got to try each one separately, the resulting mix of sauces was tasty. The part that left me wanting more was the squash blossoms, which were simply prepared and didn’t have much flavor to them – if they were fried and/or stuffed, it would have made for a more complete dish.
The Verdict – You cannot ask for anything more from a $45 tasting menu. Between the excellent dishes, entertaining table-side preparations and presentations, and the fun atmosphere, Sala de Despiece 2 offers diners a really special dining experience that is hard to find, especially at that price. If you are heading to Madrid and are looking for a place to go before a night out, SDD2 is a great option but make sure to make a reservation well in advance.