I am always on a lookout for interesting tapas restaurants and when a recommendation comes my way I will take it. Vi Cool had an OK selection of fusion tapas but where this place truly shined was their wines. Such. Good. Wines.

Vi Cool, calle de las Huertas, 12, 28012

After our fusion dinner debacle at StreetXO way back when, I received a recommendation to check out Vi Cool and see what I think about their take on modern/fusion tapas. It took us a while to get here but get we did, fusion tapas we had and good wine we drank. Let’s see how this measured up to our expectations.

Right of the bat I can say that the wine served at Vi Cool was exceptional. It was definitely on the pricier side but out of the four wines we had, all tasted great. I thought that they had quite a decent wine selection across the board but we picked the following four to try: Brezo Méncia Bodegas Mengoba (D.O. Bierzo, €5), Phylos 12 Meses Bodegas De Blas Serrano (D.O. Ribeiro del Duero, €6), De Blas Serrano Bodegas de Blas Serrano (D.O. Ribeiro del Duero, €7) and Pecado Original Bodegas Muñoz Martín (D.O. Vinos de Madrid, €4).

All of the four wines were super easy to drink and had enough complexity for eight wines. The wines I picked had a good balance between lightness and boldness. The ones that Matas had had a little bit more character but not overpoweringly so. This might also come in as a shocker but that €4 wine from Madrid might have been my favourite. Anyway, I repeat: SUCH GOOD WINES.

Foodwise, we asked our waitress for her recommendations and she named half of the menu for us, so we just picked what we initially were thinking of getting. These patatas bravas (€10.50) were actually quite good. It was definitely an interesting take on this popular dish and I think Vi Cool managed to create something great. Both the texture and flavour was very pleasant. We were very happy we ordered it!

On the other hand, ravioli (€12) proved to be quite underwhelming. The taste profile of the ravioli itself was rather subdued and we were not impressed by it. The dish had a very lovely sauce but it was not enough to make this into a good dish.

These chicken wings with kimchi sauce (€12) were all right. I just miss a good punch-in-your-face kimchi, and while the chicken was juicy and well seasoned, sadly it did not deliver that oomph I am missing. Still, definitely better than the mostly tasteless ravioli.

Fried prawns with curry and mint mayo (€13.50) were not too bad either. The prawns were fried well (meaning, they were not overcooked) and the mayo had a little spice to it, so we enjoyed this quite a bit. The only weird thing was that they came out rather lukewarm and while it did not bother Matas, I felt that they could have been delivered sooner for an optimal eating experience.

I am only quickly glancing over the food because it is not where this place shined. Come to Vi Cool for a great glass of wine and you will not be disappointed. While overall the food was not too bad, the wines blew our socks off and that is a fact. I will even overlook the wine prices because they were that great.

Mundane update alert: yoga cult

Mundane update alert is back by popular demand (an entirety of two people were interested), so here we are! Right, you all probably remember how I managed to join a geriatric yoga practice way back when in April (read all about it here). Well, that interesting experience lasted for less than a month because I decided to quit that particular gym. Long story short, it was far from home, it was expensive and it just was not my type of yoga at all. I bade farewell to my septuagenarian counterparts and off I went to find some greener pastures (I did no such thing, I quit silently and with no teary goodbye).

Anyway, after scouring Google Maps and writing to a bunch of yoga studios located in La Latina, I settled on the only studio that had a selection of daily classes (vinyasa and power yoga). Good news come first: the studio is less than five minutes away from where I live and it has a soft and fluffy kitkat that is always there and loves spending time with you during practice! A slight drawback of this yoga studio is that it is DEFINITELY 100% A CULT. 😆

Now hear me out, I am a very un-spiritual person and my favourite type of yoga is any no-nonsense practice that works on strength and flexibility, so I immediately come out as majorly biased against any demonstration of spirituality. Little did I know what I signed up for when I joined this particular yoga joint run by two yoga teachers.

Let’s start with the owner himself – Eugenio (nobody calls him that) or Churry To. I think, and I am only speculating, that Churry To might be a Sanskrit name given to him while he was obtaining his yoga teacher credentials in India (and yes, that is a thing which I have encountered a few times with people who visit ashrams or gurus and subscribe to their particular religious/spiritual beliefs while there, and yes, weirdly, I somehow know of such people in the first place) or it could as well be a random nickname and I might be reading too much into this. Although he has been to India multiple times and organises yoga retreats for his studio members. On one occasion I overheard him encouraging a few girls to join by saying and I quote: “they serve excellent vegan food, don’t worry you can eat all the jamón once you come back”. I had a good chuckle at that.

Anyway, why do I say this tiny yoga studio is a cult? Oh boy, there has never been a single practice where you did not have to sit in attention and listen to his observations on the meaning of life, on everyone’s unique path and the like. These other girls (we are usually around 8), they listen to every world with wide eyes and of course with a few heads nodding along the way. Mind you, all of this is happening in Spanish, so my involvement is already very limited and I mostly manage to tune it out until the yoga practice starts. It only takes a few minutes but the little lecture is always there without a fail.

Having the small space incensed comes without saying, although they just fall short on burning sage which I am thankful for. Now, savasana (the corpse pose – the lie-down resting pose you do at the end) is already my least favourite part of any yoga practice (such a waste of time!) but here it is taken to another level. My lovely friend Priya will recognise what I am talking about here as I first heard about this meditation/yoga part from her. Imagine, you are tired after the practice, you lie down, close your eyes, relax… and then comes this loud “RELAX” and not just “relax” but a veritable command sounding more like “REA-LACH” (imagine that CH like Spanish j or kh in khakis). I literally jolted upright the first time! He says it both in Spanish (quietly) and English with the shout, so at first I thought that that REA-LACHS was for my benefit but I think it is something he always does.

His spiritual lecture done and dusted, the command to “RELAX” completed, there is still one last hurdle to overcome (for me, everyone else seems very into it). Every practice without fail ends with a chant of three long and loud and vibrating “oms”. Once he even whipped out this harmonica to accompany the chanting. I have my standards though, so still to this day I refuse to chant any “oms”, spirituality be damned.

All in all, his spiritual ramblings, in as much as I understand them, do not seem to be malignant or self-centered, so I could not care less about it. He is a pretty chill and down to earth person otherwise and he offers a decent yoga practice. I can survive a few minutes of listening about chakras, reincarnation, karma and a few oms in the end.

I have been to 12 yoga classes so far and yesterday was the first class I had with the other person. The girl, Fernanda, actually speaks decent English! And I am happy to report that besides burning incense, there was no proselytising or chanting, although I am so used to Churry’s way of leading a class that it was had to follow her (all yoga classes are in Spanish).

Oh, by the way, the studio reeks of CAT and Mopa’s long hair is EVERYWHERE but, hey, it must be a pretty decent yoga for me to endure all of this, am I right? I think so. I hope so. Or maybe I have already been brainwashed??? WHO KNOWS!😆😆😆