kellycrull.com - expat life in Spain

Alex Selim is our guest essayist. He’s a close friend of mine, and a friend of the Internaitonal community here in Madrid. Alex recently relocated to San Franscico, but apparently that isn’t keeping him from writing about Madrid. He had one more article up his sleeve, and here we have it! Enjoy.

Bring up the topic of food with many Spaniards and you are likely to be bombarded with superlatives extolling the superiority of Spanish cuisine and the benefits of the Mediterranean diet faster than you can say “Jamon Serrano.”

But even if you appreciate the local gastronomy, you may at times find yourself longing for food with a little more kick to it. Fortunately, as Madrid’s population has become more diverse, so have its cuisines. Besides a vast number of international restaurants, a wide variety of specialty foods stores ranging from East and South Asian to Middle Eastern and Latin American are available throughout the city for those who are adventurous enough to prepare it on their own and want to save a few euros in the meantime . . . that is, of course, if they know where to find them.

My personal culinary expedition through Madrid began when I happened to discover a Little Chinatown, located, of all places, literally right underneath Plaza de España.

Feeling particularly brave one day, I decided to find out what exactly that stairway leads to on the northeast corner of the plaza near the metro entrance. I found a Chinese travel agency, a cheap little Chinese restaurant that serves excellent dumplings, and finally at the end of the hall just before the entrance to the parking garage, I found a grocery store.

Once inside Dong Fang Extremo Oriente, as the grocery store is called, I found a large selection of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean and Indian essentials. They even have a large selection of Chinese language books . . . if you happen to be looking for them.

Dong Fang stocks a large selection of instant noodles as well as frozen dumplings and egg rolls. They have seaweed rolls for making sushi and a large selection of Thai food, which happens to be my specialty. You can find many of the essentials for Thai food like fish sauce, oyster sauce, coconut milk, red, yellow and green curry and sweet chili sauce. For a shortcut there is canned yellow curry and sour seafood soup.

Unfortunately, either my Spanish takes a turn for the worse every time I go in or the staff doesn’t speak very much Spanish. So if you are looking for something specific, don’t count on getting much help. However, the shelves are well-stocked and well-organized.

Though Dong Fang does carry Patak’s Indian curry mixes for 5.75€, for your South Asian cooking needs, I would recommend going to Calle Miguel Servet between the Lavapiés and Embajadores Metro Stations. Walking past Nasima Store Alimentación, you could easily mistake it for any other run-of-the-mill alimentacion, but take a look inside and you’ll find a veritable treasure trove of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi spices, rice and tea.

At Nasima Store, I talked to Mohammed Chaton who runs the store for his father—a native of Bangladesh. Mr. Chaton speaks English well and was very helpful. The aforementioned Patak’s curry mixes cost a mere 3.30€, while Laziza Spice Mixes which combines the necessary spices for dishes like Chicken Masala cost 1.95€. However, if you are brave enough to want to cook from scratch, Nasima also sells individual spices like Madras Curry Powder. Fortunately the Natco company prints recipes on their packages.

From Nasima, if you walk toward Embajadores and turn left onto Calle Amparo you will find Foodland Alimentación Oriental, a small shop that stocks Indian, Middle Eastern and African food. If, instead, you walk the opposite direction from Nasima and turn left onto Calle Lavapiés, you will run into Autoservicio Hiperlavapies where you can buy pita bread and occasionally find some Middle Eastern staples like Hummus, a chickpea dip, or Baba Ghanoush, an eggplant dip.

However, if you are really serious about Middle Eastern food, then there is no better place to go than the neighborhood surrounding the Mosque, near Metro Parque de Avenidas. From the metro, walk toward Plaza Venezia (where bus 74 stops) and turn right, then cross the bridge. From there, make another right as the street curves onto Calle de Salvador de Madariaga. You will then find yourself across the street from the mosque. There are a number of Arabic grocery stores near there, but a Canadian friend of Egyptian background took me to Alimentación Al-Nur on the corner of Antonio Calvo. Standing in front of the mosque, the store is hidden by trees, but once you get past them you will see its sign written in large yellow letters with a blue background.

At Al-Nur you can buy mint tea, baklava, a type of stringy cheese called sharf and two of my personal favorites za’atar and molukhaya. Za’atar is a Lebanese spice mix (called tomillo in Spanish because it consists of thyme, sesame seed and sumac) that you combine with olive oil and use as a salad dressing or a dip for pita bread. Molukhaya is a traditional Egyptian soup cooked in chicken broth with fried garlic. It can be found in the freezer.

Finally, considering Spain’s historic relationship with Mexico, you would think that it would be easier to find a Mexican alimentación in Madrid, but it took a tip off by a friend from Mexico City for me to find Canasta Mexicana, a Mexican alimentación in La Latina.

Decorated with bright blue walls and piñatas hanging from the ceiling, its shelves are stocked with a variety of Mexican salsas, (Mexican) tortillas, frijoles and other essential ingredients for Californians like myself, to find the essential ingredients for Mexican cooking.

It’s owner, Rita Sanchez, hails from Guadalajara, Mexico and also runs Taquería del Alamillo around the corner. As a result, the store, which has been open for just over a year, also sells takeout food, including tamales and gorditas.

The woman working at the counter was very friendly and spoke English well as she showed me around the store.

So if you’re starving for a break from the comida típica, take advantage of Madrid’s diversity and check out one of these ethnic grocery stores. ?¡Buen provecho!

Dong Fang Extremo Alimentos de Extremo Oriente
Galería (Subterráneo) Parking
Plaza de España, s/n (Metro: Plaza de España)
91 542 14 64
Every Day: 10:00 - 14:00 and 16:30 - 20:30

Nasima Store Alimentación
Calle Miguel Servet, 6 (Metro: Lavapiés/Embajadores)
91 468 3817
Every Day: 11:00 - 23:00

Foodland Alimentación Oriental
Calle Amparo, 88 Local (Metro: Embajadores)
91 467 28 80
M-F: 10:00 - 14:00 and 17:00 - 20:30
Sat: 10:00 - 14:00
Sun and Holidays: 12:00 - 14:00

Autoservicio Hiperlavapiés
Calle Lavapies, 48 (Metro: Lavapies)
91 528 29 46
Every day: 10:30 - 23:00

Alimentación Al-Nur
Calle Antonio Calvo, 11 (Metro: Parque de Avenidas)
91 326 09 01
Every day: 10:00 - 22:00

Canasta Mexicana
Calle Segovia, 15 (Metro: La Latina)
91 366 5794
www.canastamexicana.com
info@canastamexicana.com
M-F: 11:00 - 14:00 and 16:30 - 21:00
Sat: 12:00 - 14:30