This is a must go if you are in Madrid. It was a happy stumble for us as we were leaving the Sunday…read moreEl Rastro flea market, which was an amazing market by the way. We walked into this small but crowded joint and never been so glad to have made the pit stop. The specialties are definitely the grilled sardines and the grilled peppers. Sprinkled with some sea salt and voila, I teared up when feasting on them. The people watching experience was awesome too! We found it quite comical the various ways people attempted to eat a sardine. Some gnawed on its side, some tried to peel off the flesh with their fingers...we even saw one trying to take the skin off first! Wow, omg hilarious! Whatever ways tickle your fancy, as long as you can get these succulent fish in your mouth and taste it you will not regret it. My husband vows by my technique which he claims work the best. I accredit it to my Asian background. Fish is served whole where I grew up. Since the fish fits in the mouth, pick it up by the tail. Bite off the head first. Trust me it's not gross. The fish had been deep fried so well the head is a tasty crunch. Slowly then use your teeth to lightly peel or grind off the flesh using an upward motion, and what's left is the main spine with tiny bones. Lastly, you must eat the tail. Again it's so crunchy and full of umami like the head. Check out my photos for better visuals as I am not that good of a self help writer. Haha! I wished I lived here so I could go back every week and you can't beat the price and the energy of this place as well.

Hmm... strangely enough, only my friend & I seemed bothered by the fact that the grilled sardines…read morehad so much scales on them! That, as you can imagine, made it extremely difficult & messy for us to consume the otherwise yummy tasting sardines. A heaping plate of sardines is only 3.60 euros, and we were thankful to only have ordered half portion which was more than enough for the two of us. What we did enjoy, was the Pimentos de padron - a type of green chillies known as padron, pan fried & sprinkled with sea salt. Yummy! It was soft and tasty, a bit on the salty side. The beer complements everything perfectly, and we saw many people eating bread with their meal (we opted out of the bread because there was too high a consumption of bread on our trip in Spain). Overall, it would've definitely been a 4-5 star rating if the sardines didn't have scales on them. It was a fun experience! PS. I uploaded two of the same pictures of my meal but it won't let me write the captions nor does it give me credit on the business page! :'(