All I wanted was to reprise the Cachopo I last had in 2019. For years I dreamt of a piping hot plate of breaded and deep-fried layers of ham and cheese although my coronary health might have had other ideas. The restaurant where I first had it was just around the corner so we planned to have dinner there on Easter night because they said they were open – they weren’t. So we asked about Monday, and they said “closed.” So we said we’d come back on Tuesday, and they said, “See you then.”

The website said that they opened at 7:30 so at 7:35 we walked in. “We don’t serve until 8:30.” Now of course we could kill an hour walking around and looking at things but the thought of sitting down to that meal at 9:00 was unattractive to my sense of well-being so we left and tried to formulate a Plan B.

Neither of us wanted to hike back up to Las Huertas, and the other alternative – take-out from Corte Inglés would have been fine but it being MLW’s birthday, having a warmed-up dinner at home didn’t seem all that romantic. Finally, we agreed that our best bet was to find something to eat in Plaza Mayor, the totally tourist-centered outdoor food court set on the site of a one-time Spanish Inquisition Auto de Fe, a festival of heretic punishment. Seriously, the dining is great with many restaurants setting up outside tents and lots of good options for dinner. We climbed the hill, crossed the street, entered via the west-side tunnel, and picked the first place we saw. It turned out, once again, to be a great choice. We sat outside by the heaters, had a couple of glasses of great wine, MLW had a superb piece of pork loin and I had one more serving of cheeks, probably the best I’ve had on this trip. Cachopo was on the menu, but it was designed for two people and not even I, the ultimate fan wanted to tackle that.

The setting sun illuminated the tops of the towers on the buildings that surround the square, and somewhere a guitarist was busking for tips. When the meal was done, we ordered one more glass of wine and watched people until the lights came on in the plaza. That was our signal to pack it in and head home, a nice penultimate evening in Madrid.