Alfredo's Barbacoa

c. Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, 11 (91-345-1639)
c. Lagasca, 5 (91-576-6271)

A great place and, according to some, one of the best burgers in town (maybe in Spain as well). Two different locations, one (the one I like most) close to Santiago Bernabeu stadium. The other (supposedly the original one, but that's according to the Frommer's Madrid Guide) in Lagasca (Barrio de Salamanca, but not very Hilfiger oriented in spite of that...)

Being in the summer, only the Lagasca restaurant is open, so my partner and I go there. It is one of our first nights out in six months, since our daughter was born (she was born two days after the Windsor building fire and our visit to Soroa restaurant in calle Modesto Lafuente -a great place also, if very different from Alfredo's). Funny that we should spend so little time out without the girl, but these are the problems of being first-time parents, or so they say.

Alfredo's Barbacoa is a natural selection in this context, because it is full of young people, including girls of twentysomething (sometimes less), and after six months of family life one tends to prefer this to other alternatives in which there is a higher probability of dining surrounded by what my grandfather called "el frente de juventudes" (Youth Front). If you know what I mean. And this includes the (rather decent) restaurant Montana, just behind Alfredo's in Lagasca. Rather more expensive, too...

To transmit a bit of what Alfredo's is, this is a place where you find tv screens showing John Denver concerts, where walls are covered in Texan flags and this handkerchiefs usually worn by mexicans (film version) and other vaqueros (badanas, or something like that). The food is not very varied and concentrates in burgers and red meat in general. Only people like MBAs working in investment banking or like Carmen Calvo (from the Spanish government) would be able to order chicken in a place like this. Not even them, probably...

But very good burgers they are. I mean, maybe if you come from Texas this is kind of like eating paella in Houston, but for the Madrid taste they are best in class. At the same price, for instance, as the toxic plasma they serve at Vips under the "hamburguesa" denomination. And better than the Hollywood Joint version (definitely paletirri in these times that are running) or the Hard Rock version (just for guiris and the Spanish Hilfiger crowd).

We have a good time. I take the "super" (250g) BLT burger with cheese and a pint of beer (or two...) My partner takes a monstruous tournedo that makes us think that it is always better to stick to the burger here. And we have the opportunity to check people all around us: a large, round table with 3-4 couples even older than us (amazing) among which there is a Mariano Rajoy lookalike (surrealistic); another large, round table with this typical group of people that seem to have fixed a date within an Internet chat group (young, ugly and pretty lascivious, all of them); several couples, presumably unmarried, no kids (if they had them they would not be here or they would be looking all around like madmen/women).

Well, anyway. The best burgers in town. Take note. Even those of you who don't have a baby daughter.