What do we have left in Madrid if the Chino de Plaza de España closes? WHAT?
Betamax I don't think it will come back , neither him laser disk and maybe you'll find one music store ten years from now, but what we cannot let disappear are Chinese restaurants like the one in the parking lot of Plaza de España .
I have slept so many peaceful nights, thinking that your discreet location wouldn't wake up nose for gentrifiers that have dug their claws into so many of the mythical establishments in the center of Madrid, to ** read the news in Somos Malasaña ** about the remodeling and future operation of the car park and facilities that will put the restaurant to tender against other operators or entrepreneurs.
Costumbrista image in the Chino of Plaza de España
I have a little angel of moral conscience debating on my right shoulder with a little devil holding onto my left about how fair the idea of these contests of appropriation of spaces , but the devil says that establishments like this, which have fed fabulously for four dollars to several generations of citizens should enjoy the same protection as the Aqueduct of Segovia, or the very Egyptian Pyramids.
I acknowledge that in my frequent visits to this underground dining room , I never opted for the chicken feet, cow tongues or the coagulated blood that they showed in the showcase of the bar. In those years my interest in offal had not aroused , but yes I swallowed many grams of monosodium glutamate impregnated in those vermicelli, the sautéed rice and of course the famous pork dumplings.
It was there that I first tried the mixture of soy sauce with vinegar in which he bathed those “little pieces of heart” , and it has never occurred to me to go without acid when playing with soy since.
The Chinese of Plaza España, ( Zhou Yulong for connoisseurs) is the place where I would have gone Anthony Bourdain if he lived in Madrid , he had the charm of the seedy that fascinates half of the population, and you could go to dinner alone at the bar and be as comfortable as if you were with a group of six people.
They serve very cold draft beer and you could eat in fifteen or sixty minutes.
I used to meet that welcoming wildlife of auteur film fans who were going to or coming from seeing some arty-culti premiere in the Alphaville or Renoir, tables of six or eight young eighties heavy enthusiasts who talked about Naruto or Akira between bite and bite , and of course, chinese workers in their break time (I suspect that there are no days off in the Chinese migrant work calendar).
I'm surprised he wasn't there that day when two of the cooks from the establishment They got into a fight that ended the life of one with a knife. There were weeks that I went three times for dinner.
I'm not worried about the Asian cuisine in the capital since there is a kind of revolution in the Usera area that does not stop growing, and in the near the Plaza de España do not stop opening new premises that could turn this crossroads into a true landscape like that of Bladerunner.
Without going further, The Noodle King endure like a true sovereign, around the corner is the ramen of winnie the pooh , where they macerate meat outside the fridge in full view of everyone in tubs from All to One Hundred - scaring away the picky eaters and entrenching the seedy-lovers -; Pulling towards Plaza de Luna is the ** Kung Fu ** and its unforgettable sea bass in Sichuan chili sauce and a few more that look like a “broom closet” that promise a universe of flavors loaded with umami that no European recipe book is capable of achieving.
Even so, El Chino de Plaza España deserves superior recognition , and if I find out that in the end another business that provides little more than soulless service takes its place, I will be forced to type some words that I did not think would come out of me. "I will never forgive you, Carmena."
Blessed be your dumplings
And bless the pyramids of noodles