El Capricho: An Overwhelming Experience

Following last week’s post on what is always the greatest gastronomical experienced of the year, I wanted to dedicate this week’s post to what has been, to the date, one of the greatest culinary experiences of my life. As I’ve mentioned on countless occasions before, gastronomy is not just about appearances and tastes, but also about emotions. The best restaurants and the best chefs, are the ones able to transmit something more than just culinary excellence to the customer. The great meals we all have glued to our memories are those where we felt a concoction of emotions after every bite and every dish. Those meals where taste and aesthetics even shared the spotlight with deeper feelings such as pleasure, euphoria, the sense of luxury… In my case, that perfect meal arrived in the Winter of 2017 when my family and I visited one of the world’s most famous meat restaurants in the world. Lost in the empty plains in the heart of Spain, El Capricho has now become some sort of temple for gastronomy-lovers such as me. Today, I’ll attempt to take you back with me to relive one of the most overwhelming culinary experiences of my life.

As it’s typical in Spain, my family and I decided to share four separate first dishes and then order a larger second dish for the entirety of the table too. El Capricho’s philosophy revolves around their famous cows from which they obtain one of the most high-quality beef meat in the world. In honor of their more than a century-old tradition, we ordered an aged-beef carpaccio, a typical Spanish dish from the Castilla region of Spain called morcilla, steak tartare, and finally another typical Spanish product from the region called cecina. The aged-beef carpaccio (see left) was something from another world. The taste of the meat had the perfect leverage between intensity and delicacy. It was an extremely simple dish, five cuts of completely raw meat and a touch of the best Spanish olive oil. Just that. The morcilla, which is basically a black sausage made with cow blood and onions, was also unbelievably good. Served with freshly-made warm bread, the touch of the onions in that morcilla was spectacular. With the steak tartare (see below), the feelings were reminiscent of the carpaccio. An extremely intense flavor of some of the best aged-meat out there, with just a touch of condiments to strengthen its taste. As a final note, the best cecina (cecina is simply ham made out of beef) I’ve ever tasted in my life (see right below). Perfect cut. Perfect taste.

All the starters were sublime, yet the reason why we had made the trip to El Capricho was for their globally-acclaimed steaks. As the main course of our magical lunch, we were served a nearly 4.5 pound monster of a steak that tasted absolutely glorious. The meat was not only cooked to perfection but it also bonded tenderness and an explosive taste to transmit a feeling of luxury and excellence like no other steak had ever done for me. Elation. Pleasure. These are the things I felt when eating the best piece of meat yet in my life. Above all, the tradition and the history of a restaurant that takes care of their cows as if they were the Spanish monarchs. The secret to their excellence is most certainly dedication and tradition.