Valencia Eats: Menú del día at Macellum

Aug 28

Aug 28 Valencia Eats: Menú del día at Macellum

Macellum is a restaurant located in my favorite corner of the old Valencia city center - the quiet, yet charming northeast part of the neighborhood. The streets are windy, the buildings are historic, but there is a distinct lack of tourists and touristy shops.

I've had my eye on this restaurant because it participates regularly in the VLC Cuina Oberta Restaurant Week program, but I'd never made it out to it during those events (besides, the special menus often don't really look any different or less expensive than the menus on normal days).

The restaurant itself is a small, casual space.

The "Menú ejecutivo" consists of "snacks," three starters, a rice/fideuà dish, and dessert for €19.50. Drinks and bread are not included. Here is the selection of the "snacks," along with the fresh bread and seaweed compound butter. These took such a long time to come out of the kitchen - a surprise because they should be the same for all of the set menus - that I thought that they were the three starters.

This was a beet puree.

Crispy salmon skin (didn't taste like much, just crunchy).

"Empanadillas de pisto," which were pisto (like pureed ratatouille) wrapped in a thin slice of radish instead of a pastry shell like normal empanadillas. You see, there are two of them wedged into this log!

Then after a while, the first starter came. This was herring with tomatoes and a very interesting vegetable I'd never tried before: sea fennel. It tastes just like regular fennel, but have these bulbous ends that look kind of like parts of a giant broccoli.

Then came a salmon tartare with seaweed and mango.

Finally our third starter came, which were warm green beans topped with flaked fish in a pool of pureed potatoes. By the way, all three starters are to be shared between two people, so if you're squeamish about sharing food, this is not the place to come! (Nor any familial dinner in Spain - a lot of dishes are shared, with no common serving utensils. Just dig right in.) All three starters were delicious, but this was my favorite.

Next came our choice of fideuà with shrimp, hake, and seaweek. It's a huge pan but keep in mind the noodles are mono-layer thin. This had a nice taste although was a bit oversalted.

The waiter cleaned our table of crumbs after the main course. I love that!

Dessert was an ice cream of kefir, on top of a granita of ginger and mango cubes. I quite enjoyed this.

Altogether with drinks and the bread, the bill came out to be around €23 per person. This is but one of many affordable luxuries you can find in Valencia! While I liked the food a lot in general (with the exception of the over-salted fideuà), the food came out incredibly slow. Puzzling because there are so few tables and little variety from set menu to set menu. From start to finish we spent two hours here.

While we were dining, we found out from overhearing the chef, Alejandro Platero, talk to another table, that he was going to appear in the next season of Top Chef España! And apparently he will do quite well (he even divulged that he was in the top X final contestants!), so he is planning on opening a new restaurant in the Gran Via area.

Enorme orgullo d ver a nuestro @PlateroChef en la próxima edicion d @TopChefA3. Estaremos atentos ¡Muchisima suerte! pic.twitter.com/9kZaOy365T
— Paco Almarza (@PacoAlmarza) August 27, 2015