And hit him with the lemon pie
How are the fashions, eh. I think more and more like the immense (and now, eternal) karl lagerfeld , that he was so hot after affirming “ being fashionable is the last step to what is out of fashion ”. It's a bit like that, isn't it?
If something is on everyone's lips —never better said— it is that it has begun its unappealable, stark path towards decline; because the human being wants to be niche but in reality he is a crowd, what hi farem.
It happens in all sectors, but especially , in gastronomy.
Fashion always starts like a whisper , a flutter between gourmets and nomads that sneaks (usually) between the big ones and from there slides, _softly (I want to feel your lips / kissing me again) _ to the 'trendy restaurants', that construct so ambiguous and yet so sadly recognizable.
nordic interior design, merciless monstera , scribbled blackboards and short menus with inevitable dishes, come again that torrija.
It happened with the cebiche, Luis Arévalo had a lot to do with that and that wonderful Nikkei 225 ; he passed with him Sandwich Club of David Muñoz in StreetXO (perhaps the first bao to blow up Madrid) and it happened with the grotesquely aged meats , a good idea in the hands of Joan Abril from ** Ca Joan in Altea ** but not so good in the case of so many fake taverns in search of the goofy fudi.
The lemon pie it is the new black, the new gin and tonic and the new sushi; everything at once. an immortal dessert whose origin is supposed to go back to the Queen Elizabeth I ; It goes that she should not like meringue to the 'Virgin' monarch.
the lemon tart either tarte au citron has always been an essential in so many menus of great restaurants in La France and let alone in their pâtisseries, do not miss the Jacques Genin in the 3rd arrondissement or, of course, Pierre Hermé; what is not so clear is how it has come, alas!, to the letters of so many hipster spots.
Lemon Pie or Nothing
I suppose that it will be the same way of entering so many trends: Sant Antoni neighborhood ; that ground zero of what's cool. From there to ** Las Salesas ** and from there to the last corner of Spain, no gastrobar without its lemon pie. But not everything was going to be bad news, there are fabulous ones.
Absolutely essential is that of ** Alabaster (Madrid) ** by Óscar Marcos and Fran Ramírez; I talk to his chef, Anthony Hernando , about the keys to its creaminess: “we prepare it with a base of almond cake , egg white and amaretto, as a peculiarity it does not have flour and for that reason it is suitable for coeliacs ; then we accompany it with a spherification of lemon gel and condensed milk, lemon ice cream and we finish with an Italian meringue that we toast when we go out to the table”.
Magisterial and totemic.
In Madrid we also really like the ones from ** La Maruca ** ("Our Lemon Tart 1981"), KultO , Mr Martin either Crustó Bakery which, by the way, recently won the award for Best Bread in Madrid organized by the Club Matador.
That of the Salvador family in ** La Marítima ** in Veles e Vents (Valencia) or the Epicerie by Romain Fornell in Pau Claris (Barcelona).
Alabaster's Lemon Pie
Also, why not say it, those of Christina Oria and that icon of Paseo de la Castellana (I will never forgive you for letting Embassy die, Madrid). I'll never forget the day you dropped 86 years later , the teahouse of Margaret Kearney Taylor ; shelter of spies, journalists and folklore.
I remember the last time: two coffees, a lemon cake and a bottle of French champagne (horrible redundancy, because the champagne is French or it is not; but we forgave Embassy even that) to celebrate who knows what nonsense.
How happy I was there; And how sad life must be without meringue and lemon cake, right?