La Tasquería is a 1* restaurant headed by Javi Estévez that is famous for offering elevated dishes made from offal and other “discard” meats. This tasting dinner celebrates the last 5 years of his cooking with La Tasquería’s most iconic dishes brought together. Let’s go!

La Tasquería, calle de Duque de Sesto, 48, 28009

We started the dinner with a platter of different breads and some olive oil on the side. We continued to munch on these throughout the night and it was being replenished very thoroughly. The bread was actually quite good and the oil had a very light and floral taste to it without any of the bitterness.

We started with three appetizers: fish skin cracker, foie macaron and beef tongue. I really liked all of them but foie and the beef tongue were true standouts. Fish skin was a little bit dryish and lacked flavour but after eating salted egg fish skin in Singapore who could blame me for having standards? In the drinks department, my mom and I started with the house vermouth and Matas had a jerez negroni. The drinks were lovely!

Partridge paté with green apple and port vinaigrette was one of my favourite dishes of the night. The paté was very light and had a silky texture balanced with the sweetness and acidity coming from the green apple and port vinaigrette.

Beef liver salad came with greens, onion and nuts and was a very balanced dish. Beef liver had a lovely creaminess to it that was complemented by the slight acidity of the vinaigrette. Simple yet very elegant dish considering there is beef liver involved.

Scarlet prawn, beef cheek and chipotle taco was insanely good. This was single-handedly the best thing we ate the entire night. While the rest of the dining party discarded the “decorative” prawn, I went in for the kill and sucked all of that caramelised goodness inside. It was super creamy and flavourful, and yes, I know that sucking prawn heads is not the most ladylike pastime but I had no choice, the prawn head was talking to me in the ancient language of hidden flavours.

Talking about juiciness and flavour, this taco was the bomb. The prawn was meaty, snappy and tender, the braised beef cheek was dripping with juice and chipotle added a layer of spice and creaminess to the mix. This was joocy, loosy and goosy and I could have eaten many more of these if only they kept them coming. A true highlight of the night.

It took me a while to get what this dish was about. I kept hearing “pig’s tail” but I saw that tiny crispy pig’s tail and I wanted to learn what the big piece under the eel was. It took me four more tries until I got it: there was the eel, a small pig’s tail and a BIG pig’s tail. All right, now we were talking, big and small pigs I understood.

I do not remember the eel too much. Was it truly necessary in the grand big pig/small pig, two tails scheme? I am not so sure. So the eel got lost for me. The small pig’s tail was both crunchy and chewy and some of those chewier bits actually got stuck to my teeth. If anyone knows that feeling of a gluey gelatinous object being stuck somewhere in your mouth, you know it is not fun.

The big pig’s tail was very very rich and fatty. It was barely held together by the few remaining collagen strands and it melted at every bite coating the entire mouth with fat. It is a very tasty but not so pleasant an experience. I think the piece could have been a little bit smaller as it became overpoweringly fatty at the end.

Meet the pièce de résistance that is pig’s head slowly cooked in its fat and then deep fried. The absolute signature dish of the chef. When I saw it while browsing the internets, I knew I will have to eat it one day. I brought my mom and Matas as companions for this affair. The head is presented as is including eyes, teeth and the brain intact. How to eat it? Well, you start from the ears (could have used some spice), continue with the cheeks (very rich and fatty), munch on the snout (cartilage-y, yet tender), you fish out the tongue (small and dryish) and dig for the brain. Yes, the brain. Matas and I were not big fans of the brain. I personally do not mind the taste (very peculiar) but that mushy consistency does not do anything for me. Surprisingly, my mom was all over the brains. Go figure! I licked all of the bones clean, including the lovely jawline and we were totally done after this. Too bad there were three more courses to come.

Next to come to the table was callos or a tripe stew. If you follow this blog, you already know that we had this dish twice already and we were not the biggest fans. Callos at 1* did not change our view. For a tasting menu I think that the portion was way too big. This was a single serving and I struggled to eat half of it (I eventually finished the dish but not without hating myself a little for it). It was rich. It was fatty. It was mushy. It tasted good enough, especially with the spicy sauce on the side, but there was just physically too much of it.

The cheese course was actually rather disappointing, on the other hand, I could barely fit anything in me at this point, so who cares. I have already eaten my money’s worth in pig’s head and offal, so these last bits in the tasting menu did not interest me much.

For a 1* restaurant celebrating its greatest achievements this lemon pie felt too pedestrian. The crust and lemon custard were fine but the merengue felt chewy and was too hard and the mango ice cream was nothing special as well. I bet they can do better and I am truly not sure why this dessert ended up on their celebratory menu.

These mignardises as most mignardises (or petits fours, depending) felt useless. It contributed absolutely nothing to the dinner except for being a “sweet finisher”. Can some more learned explain to me why we eat them, why we eat them at the end of the meal and why are they necessary in the first place? This is not a dig at La Tasquería particularly, this is the problem I have with most of the fine dining restaurants. It seems to me that these little treats are usually just an afterthought, so why do they still get served at the end of the meal? Enlighten me, I really do want to know.

Final thoughts

The food: I think it is admirable for a restaurant to pride themselves on cooking with offal and making a name for themselves for reintroducing these discard meats into a wider audience, and also shining the light on where offal in fine dining can go in the future. I was not entirely happy with all of the dishes or, more exactly, with their portion sizes but the food was tasty and inventive, and that is what matters in the end. 8/10.

The drinks: our drinks were very nice. We had vermouth, negroni, bloody mary and wine and we were very happy with the selection. 10/10.

The ambiance: it is an informal dining room with an open kitchen and I did like how bright, airy and sleek it was. 10/10.

The service: this was the department the restaurant was lacking the most and that actually gave me a pause to really think whether this was a 1* establishment (and since 2019 no less). The service was rather haphazard, not inattentive per se but definitely less personal in a bit of a dismissive way? Hard to explain. We were not impressed. 5/10.

Ieva’s seal of approval granted with some reservations. Would I dine here again? Yes, I think I would (on the terrace where a la carte menu is served). However, I would not take the tasting menu again (it was the only way to eat the pig’s head at this time).