Hola!
We wanted to add to the twice-monthly schedule with this bonus post on some Deep Madrid Secrets….
Poet Antonio Machado’s famous line about ‘Two Spains’ (una España que muere
y otra España que bosteza - One Spain that dies and the other that yawns…) has been upended from its original, early 20th century post-colonial context, and applied to just about everything else since.
Today we’re purloining it to apply to Madrid, to tell a tale of two cities, two Madrid’s, Old Madrid and New.
It’s a tale we’ll be telling through its coffee, and one we have to explore to answer a burning question inside - is it OK that Madrid is so much more, well, modern, all of a sudden?
When Ben got here in 1998 it was quiet, almost provincial, and deeply Spanish. Now it’s as busy as any modern metropolis, buzzing, alive, thriving, and indisputably cool.
And right now, coffee tells the whole story...
Above, Marina is standing outside Pan y Pepinillos on Calle Escorial in the wonderful, bohemian Malasaña district.
When Marina was growing up, you couldn’t walk down many of these streets due to the insane amount of hard drugs being consumed (more on that in the video below).
And now it’s clean, cool, and full of wonderful flowering balconies like this…
This coffee place, Pan y Pepinillos, where you can get everything from a good old Cafe solo to a Matcha late, even a Cardamon bun, with every kind of coffee + vegetable milk combination under the sun, is the New Madrid in all its glory.
It’s trendy, modern, slightly London or New York in feel and, well, mostly populated on the morning we were there by Londoners and New Yorkers! There was a lot of English language floating around.
The coffee was extraordinarily good, and it was a wonderful place to just sit on the bench outside and watch quiet barrio life go by. Highly recommended.
Continuing our search for New Madrid, we walked down a couple of streets, still in Malasaña, to Epico, at Calle del Marqués de Santa Ana, 2
Housed in an old dairy where decades ago milk from Madrid’s mountain cows was sold by the litre or more (you’d bring your own pail to carry it home), Epico is all granite and whitewash walls, steel tables and friendly staff.
Again this is New Madrid, and new coffee, with all the modern milks (leche de avena - oat milk, leche de coco - coconut milk etc) the original owners would never have dreamed of.
We also loved Epico. Great bar. New Madrid. In fact as more and more of these cool new coffee places spring up around the city, the other Madrid, Madrid de toda la vida - Old Madrid that’s been around forever - may be in something of a decline.
So after coffee number 2 in Epico, we set off to find it...
And wound up at the Cafetería Dos Passos, just down the street at Calle de San Bernardo, 42
This is as Old Madrid, Madrid de toda la vida, as you can get. You step in and all feels right with the world again. This is the kind of bar Ben spent his life in when he first arrived in the city in 1998. And nothing has changed.
No fancy milks, just bitterly strong coffee from a machine that’s been doing its job for years….
TV on in the background and the essential glass display case on the counter overflowing with tapas staples (pincho de tortilla, patatas bravas, ensaladilla...)
Our eye was caught by the torrijas (next to the churros in the photo below), bread soaked in milk, sugar and cinnamon and fried. Marina grabbed a couple to take home for the kids.
The Cafetería Dos Passos is as classic as they come, and if we had to tell you which to go to, New Madrid with its fancy milks and cool clientele, or Old Madrid with its torrijas and TV, we’d say, to understand the city today, you have to go to both.
One right after the other.
Then you’ll learn first hand this tale of two cities, Madrid old and new. Together they form the essence of the city right now, one foot firmly in the past, and another firmly in the future.
You’ll find these two Madrid’s everywhere - in the restaurant scene, the shops, the museums. It gives the city a kind of electric buzz as these two Madrid’s rub shoulders side by side.
So in answer to the burning question we posed at the beginning - is it OK that Madrid is so much more, well, modern, all of a sudden?
It’s fantástico! Madrid hasn’t been this exciting in years.
The final question though, is how long will the older Madrid survive?
Keep drinking some of your coffee in the Cafetería Dos Passos and its soul-mate bars and restaurants, and classic Madrid de toda la vida will be around for a while. We’ll see you there…
Below, in this week’s bonus guide, we’re sharing our highest recommendation for an unbelievable New Madrid coffee and eggs breakfast - where it is, and what to eat. Plus, a videos of Marina and Ben discussing life in Malasaña in Marina’s youth and the two Madrids we explored today…
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