Japanese food in Madrid

Miscellaneous

Hello! My name is Eri Ito, a Japanese motorsport journalist.
I mainly cover MotoGP, MotoE which is the electric two-wheel road racing championship.
This blog is all about Eri Ito’s personal experiences of visiting different countries to cover the MotoGP.
Please click: ABOUT for more details.

After covering the MotoGP SpanishGP in May, I stayed in Madrid for about a week. during this time, I went to eat Japanese food three times in one week because I was dying for it so much. It seems that my body composition requires more Japanese food than I thought.
Not only in Madrid, but also in many cities in European countries, there are Japanese restaurants. For sure, it can’t be exactly the same as in Japan, but it’s nice to be able to eat something that tastes similar to what I’m used to in countries far, far away from Japan.

On the day of my arrival in Madrid, I ate chicken katsu at a Japanese restaurant where I went for dinner.
I was so exhausted that I didn’t have the energy to look for a good restaurant, so I just went in the nearest one…I think.
I don’t know Madrid at all, so I can only say that the place was “near the Real Madrid’s home stadium”.
The impression I had was that it was a snack-like ‘fried chicken’. It was spicy.
I also ordered tekkamaki with it, but I forgot to take a picture of it. It was probably just an ordinary tekkamaki. I think.
Beer was Estrella Galicia. ‘otoshi’ was edamame beans. I don’t think there is a culture of ‘otoshi’ in Spain, so they may have followed the culture of Japanese izakaya. I love edamame, so I was very happy to eat it. The only Spanish thing I had during this meal was the beer.

During this one week, I spent most of the time writing articles at the guesthouse despite being in Madrid. It seems that when I get tired, my desire for Japanese food is heightened, so when I was feeling reasonably tired, it was time to hit a Japanese restaurant. I picked a ramen restaurant run by a Japanese man.
The staff were all Japanese, so I ordered a bowl of shoyu tonkotsu ramen in Japanese.
The ramen was topped with bean sprouts, spinach, small spring onions, fried onions (probably), a boiled egg and chashu pork. It was soy sauce based tonkotsu ramen, but not too heavy, so I enjoyed till the end, even though nowadays, I sometimes find it too heavy to eat up oily like tonkotsu.
The customers are, of course, locals who were tackling the ramen with a fork with an apron down their chest. Seeing them eat ramen with a fork rather than chopsticks was not at all surprising but I wouldn’t have thought of offering an apron to the customers if I were the shop owner. There was something cute and charming about cool businessmen dressed for the occasion but with a “bib” on tactfully eating a bowl of ramen.

One day that I forced myself to free up to see the sight of the Madrid city.
“I really want to eat some hearty meat!”
Driven by this desire, the restaurant I chose was where katsudon is served.
Most menus don’t have pictures.
“What kind of katsudon is it?”
I was worried, but it was in the style of a sauce katsudon. “I see, so this is how it is.”
Come to think of it, I had had chicken katsu on my first day in Madrid. I think my body wanted deep-fried meat at that time…….
By the way, all of these three restaurants were found near my guesthouse. There were still more Japanese restaurants upon researching. It was a nice surprise that Japanese food is so readily available and widespread.

Postscript.
Tuna, avocado and tomato baguette sandwich that I had in Madrid. So, so yummy!
The days were long in Madrid in May, and it was still bright at almost 8pm.
Perhaps because it was not dark, children were still playing outdoor in the park at this time of the day, and the strong western sun was shining on them.
While enjoying this sandwich, I was absentmindedly watching this scene wondering to myself, “when is the time for the children to go home?”