Well thought out, it’s like going to eat at your grandmother’s house. The food is traditionally Spanish, the tableware is Duralex, you only go on weekends, the tablecloth is checkered and the menu changes every time you go -unless you go more than once a month.
Rapaz opened in October and very few people can say they’ve been there to try it. And yet it’s one of the openings of the season. How is this possible? Because Rapaz (Mercado de los Mostenses) is only open Fridays and Saturdays at noon. Just twelve diners, a small space like the living room of your grandmother’s house, a menu of 35 euros and you go home as happy as if they had given you a tip.
What to eat at Rapaz
Neither another fucking Betanzos omelette nor your mother’s Russian salad, that’s how Txitxo (one of the thinking heads behind Rapaz) defines his new project -the old project and also the current one is Kitchen 154, one of our favorite restaurants in Madrid. The fact is that this definition of Rapaz was preceded by “a Spanish food place”.
So, Rapaz is a food house. Or at least that definition suits it well because it looks like a house and serves food. Spanish food, but not the holy trinity of croquette, paella and tortilla. I’ve just come from trying the December menu and more specifically a consommé of oxtail in sherry (with foie), a stuffed pheasant with demiglace sauce and fried potatoes in beef fat, a couple of cod kokotxas or a couple of tiger mussels.
The menu is renewed according to seasonal products and their Instagram gives an account of it: of the historical and what’s to come. Now with the winter of January with luck you can try stuffed free-range eggs, artichokes with seafood, stewed potatoes with octopus, duck in pepitoria and pastry cream canutillos with chestnuts in syrup for just 35€. And I say hopefully because that’s what you’ll need if you want to make a reservation.
They open reservations in the middle of the previous month so you should be aware of what is going to happen on their Instagram. They also announce on their account if they drop a reservation at the last minute. But if you do book, don’t be the type of people who don’t go or who announce it at the last minute. First, because you will regret it, and second, because they only give 24 meals a week and a last minute no-show may well make you a broken one.
Rapaz achieves simplicity in excellence or excellence in simplicity, which is almost the best thing you can say about a restaurant. And it does it at a bargain price.