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David Pérez Noack, Director of the Madrid Convention Bureau
My favourite spots: Top restaurants:
Palacio de Cibeles: As well as the Colección Cibeles cafeteria, Madrid City Council's headquarters boasts an elegant restaurant on the sixth floor. At a height of 70 metres, the Palacio de Cibeles restaurant offers magnificent views of the surroundings. Managed by the Adolfo group, created by Adolfo Muñoz, it can accommodate 92 diners indoors and 120 on the two outdoor terraces. The decor is functional and the cuisine combines traditional and modern.
DisTinto: In this new, modern gastrobar on the ground floor of Hotel Room Mate Alicia, near Plaza de Santa Ana in the heart of the city, customers can enjoy designer tapas which combine Spanish favourites with an Asian touch. The premises are open plan with a retro look, and boast furniture and fittings by famous designers, including the bar and many long tables. The generously proportioned windows look out onto the lively Literary Quarter.
Mercado de San Antón: San Antón Market offers visitors a wealth of surprising features and enables them to enjoy our gastronomic culture in all its variety. Located in the heart of the Chueca neighbourhood, it is spread across three floors which are interconnected. On the first floor, traditional products are available from 14 stalls. The second floor, which focuses on tasting options, with show-cooking stands, allows visitors to enjoy an informal meal around a bar which runs from one end of the floor to the other. This level also contains a hall where events are held. On the third floor you will find a restaurant terrace.
Top bars:
Estado Puro NH Palacio de Tepa: Paco Roncero presents the second gastrobar in the franchise he runs for the NH hotel chain. Not exactly a bar nor a restaurant, Estado Puro NH Palacio de Tepa is a modern establishment based on the Gin & Chicken concept, the idea of eating roast chicken with a gin and tonic.The setting, which combines traditional and modern styles, is enhanced by the background music devised by architects 10 James & Mau together with DJ Floro, who created a style of their own called Give it a Spanish Tinge, which blends flamenco with different styles of World Music.
Vadebaco: Central Madrid's leading wine bar offers customers over 350 different wines, 30 of which can be ordered by the glass. However, as we cannot live by wine alone, good food based on fresh local produce is also available.. In short, if you enjoy fine wine accompanied by good food, this place will be one of your favourites.
Museo Chicote: Madrid's Gran Vía is one of the city's areas where serving a cocktail constitutes a veritable art. Several establishments continue to retain the essence of the barman and keep alive the spirit created in its day by the mythical Pedro Chicote, who established a special way of consuming cocktails since he opened Museo Chicote in the thirties. Now, with the MTV-Campari recommends award to the Best European Bar 2004, Chicote has returned to its days of glory. The menu is full of suggestive and interesting names: Esperanza ("hope", with gin), Lago azul ("blue lagoon", with rum) or Julepe de menta ("mint julep", with tequila).
Top three hot spots:
Tour of the Bernabéu: It is the stadium of a great football team, the Real Madrid F.C. and it opens its doors to its fans on a daily basis, with the aim of showing them the corners and scenario in which their idols have played out so many great triumphs. The Tour of the Bernabéu also tells the history of the century-old football club, and allows visitors to be level with the playing field as well as to enjoy all the other angles that are offered by the many seats, including those of the players themselves.
The Art Walk: Madrid is one of the greatest cultural hubs in the world. This area called “The Art Walk”, no more than one kilometer along the Prado Walk in the center of the city, is a sort of paradise for art lovers: there you will find the Prado - one of the world's finest art galleries -, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofia museums, as well as a number of other institutions and buildings well worth visiting. We recommend you to head for the Velázquez and Goya rooms in the Prado, the expressionist painting collection in the Thyssen-Bornemisza, and Pablo Picasso's Guernica, which hangs in the Reina Sofia.
Gastrofestival: Now in its fourth year, the event, from 19 January to 3 February 2013, pays tribute to gastronomy. For more than two weeks, and coinciding with the international Madrid Fusión summit, over 300 of the city’s establishments will be taking part in this event that sets out to delight the five senses and raise the profile of one of the capital’s foremost tourist attractions, its gastronomy. Restaurants, cocktail bars, cookery schools, gourmet shops, clothing and accessories stores, cultural institutions, art galleries and museums are all part of a wide-ranging programme packed with events and activities to suit all tastes and budgets.
David Pérez Noack is Director of the Madrid Convention Bureau (MCB), the MICE department of the Madrid Visitors & Convention Bureau. The MCB is a non-profit organisation created by the City Council with the collaboration of a group of public and private companies in the sector, with the objective of promoting Madrid as a city of national and international meetings, and providing technical and institutional assistance for their staging. www.esmadrid.com/mcb