Another Madrid Secret: Casa Tortilla, Unlimited tapas and drinks for 12 Euros!!!

Restaurant/Bar: Casa Tortilla

Calle Hartzenbusch, 6
Hours: Mon-Thurs, 8 – 23:45h; Fri & Sat, 8 – 00:30h
Metro: Bilbao
T: 914 454 176
*Although you typically have to make reservations three weeks in advance (especially for large tables), for smaller groups a few days is sometimes sufficient. Minimum four people.

Believe it or not, tackiness is actually an admirable quality at Casa Tortilla. In a world of chirpy “Ikea” colors and hyper-contrived coordination, this joint stands alone – homely and proud. All surfaces here are tiled and from the center of the restaurant, I easily spy five distinct styles of these ceramics – each one clashing more severely with the last. Did some malevolent interior decorator plot this atrocity? Surely, sheer probability can’t account for something this incongruous. I’m stupefied.

The 5-euro still lifes slapped on
the wall, the plastic flowers on the shelf, and the hand-painted octopus on the
front window only exacerbate this endearingly cutre
(tacky) quality. This, my friends, is not
the “well-heeled” environs of classier establishments like Txirimiri; this is a gorgeous hole-in-the-wall and has a power all its own.

Can other restaurants boast
being consistently booked nearly a month in advance? Do they fill to capacity every noon and
evening? What does Casa Tortilla have
that others don’t?

Simple: they charge only twelve euros for unlimited
alcohol and tapas. While other
restaurants starve you with their high-brow, gourmet, minimalism, this divine
dive satiates you with its low-brow, gourmand…uh… “maximal-ism”. Pardon the liberties I take with the language.

Predictably, Casa de Tortilla is
primarily a place for students and savvy travelers. You can cheaply feed large numbers of
friends before the marcha (nightlife) begins.
Upon being seated at 21h, the food and drink begin and won’t stop until
at least midnight. Pitchers of beer and
sangria seem endless and a constant procession of tapa platters delight the
those with big appetites: jamon, croquetas, patas bravas, solomillo, pimientos
de pádron, and, of course, tortilla.

The festive atmosphere is evidence
by signs throughout the restaurant that read “Prohibido Cantar” (no singing).
When was the last time you were in an establishment that had to make explicit
rules against singing?

Bursts of laughter, bouts of
applause and a never-ending torrent of chatter are intensified by the
reverberating tiles. Hint: this isn’t a
place for a romantic first date.

And of course everyone is
contentedly eating and drinking. Some of
the above-mentioned menu items may be more familiar than others, but all are
delicious staples of the Spanish diet. While
the croquetas may look like common-place Tater Tots, their béchamel-filled interior
will make you an instant addict.
Béchamel, a French sauce of flour, milk, and spices, has the gooey
decadence of melted cheese. Yum!

Ingeniously seasoned with garlic,
sherry, and sweet paprika, solomillo
warrants more than a single helping and another Spanish treat is the pimiento de pádron. This dish consists solely of fried green chillies. Not only is it shocking how tasty such simplicity
can be, there is a further surprise. To
eat them is to play culinary Russian roulette – some are merely
sweet while others pack enough spice to send you guzzling the pitcher of
sangria. Hoarding the sangria would
normally be frowned upon by friends, but in Casa Tortilla’s “land of plenty”,
no one cares – hoard away!

As the night progresses, the
scene only gets more intriguing. I am
interrupted by a beautiful, young Spanish woman. “I
don’t know what you’re writing,” she says in perfectly polite Castellano, “but
I hope you aren’t forgetting to mention all the guapas (lovely girls) here tonight.”

“And you’re heading to the clubs
later, no?” I reply, “You’d never dress
so well for an antro (hole in the
wall) like this”

“Of course!”, she smiles.

She’s right – the women, prepared
for a night on the town, stand in exquisite relief to their common
surroundings.

And still more chaos erupts. As I stand talking to a group of charming
students from California’s wine country, a strapping Spanish lad at the table
behind us begins shouting at maximum volume in broken English, “Hey, Hey, I have to tell world: I
am bisexual! Me bisexual!” I don’t know
what inspired this revelation. Was it
that extra glass of sangria? A particularly
hot chilli from the pimiento de pádron?
At any rate, several of us applauded his realization. One can only be happy that his experience at
Casa Tortilla brought him one shade closer to himself. Come and partake – you never know what 12-euro
epiphanies await.