Paco Patón is one of the most solid professionals in Madrid restaurants. National Gastronomy Award for Best Room Manager in 2003 and Director of Food and Beverages at the Villa Real and Urban hotels for decades, despite boasting an exemplary resume and collecting awards, he has always defined himself as a waiter and continues to claim, today like yesterday, “a life dedicated to serving othersâ€.
For just over a year, Paco has run his own establishment in an emblematic corner of the Nueva España neighborhood, in ChamartÃn. An area that was once popularly known as the Fleming Coast, a name given to it in 1968 by the journalist Raúl del Pozo when they asked him where he vacationed. Those were the days when the pastures and farmhouses located to the north of the Bernabéu Stadium gave way to the construction of modern apartments where everything from marines from the nearby US base in Torrejón de Ardoz to young entrepreneurs and show business people settled. “The new inhabitants conquered the land from the sheep,” recalls Jorge Galaso, president of the Costa Fleming association, founded in 2015 to revitalize trade in the area. “It seemed like everyone was on vacation schedules because it was a neighborhood where there was a lot of partying at night.â€
During the 1960s and 1970s, it was the center of the capital’s nightlife, an urban sprawl that barely slept where the first hamburger restaurants in Villa y Corte soon opened, with Knight ‘n’ Squire and Alfredo’s – which are still operating today. – in the lead, and where whiskey established itself as a fashionable drink. Then came ring-ranking restaurants such as the extinct Cabo Mayor or Asador Frontón and, of course, BotillerÃa and Fogón Sacha, now an institution. One fine day, Jean-Pierre Vandelle, a French chef who had obtained a Michelin star in Las Cuatro Estaciones, decided to become independent by coming to found a gastronomic dining room called El Olivo in a corner of General Gallegos street, where he brilliantly knew how to combine the lavish recipe book Gallo with his love for extra virgin olive oil and Jerez wines. This same space is the one that Patón has chosen, three decades later, to become a self-employed entrepreneur.
The name, La Fonda de la Confianza, is that of a fictitious diner located in a suburb of Matritsa that appears in the novel Insolación by Emilia Pardo Bazán. “Trust Fund. Wines and meals. Cleanliness and equity”, read the sign outside this inn invented by the precursor of literary naturalism, in which Doña AsÃs Taboada, Marquesa de Andrade, meets with the hustler Diego Pacheco to share “appetizing hors d’oeuvres, the inciting olives and sardines , with his tight silver tunic, as well as some exquisite pickled partridgesâ€.
With the buried tribute to one of the pioneers of the national culinary story, Paco wanted to take off his usual maitre d’ tie, put on an apron and declare himself a tavern keeper in the broadest sense of the word. His brand new eating house plays the trick of lost flavors, seasonal stews and market cuisine with efficient service and attentive to every detail but nothing corseted. As befits the area, where public and private offices abound, the premises are properly conditioned to receive groups of businessmen, with three private offices of different sizes, equipped with screens to project whatever is necessary; but there are also plenty of parishioners with a vocation to enjoy and, on weekends, families dressed on their Sundays.
If, at the beginning, the menu proposed more elaborate dishes courtesy of the chef José Luis Estevan (formerly of El Cenador de Salvador and Lágrimas Negras), with whom Patón had coincided in the Millesimé salons in Mexico and Spain, after the departure of this at the end of summer the menu has become more simple, which is what one expects in a traditional bourgeois inn, with “good seasonal produce, well executed and with good service”.
It had been a long time since we owed a visit to Paco and one spring noon it seemed the most opportune to have lunch on that very pleasant covered terrace that he has installed in front of the entrance, with views of the wild olive tree (wild olive tree) that our esteemed Vandelle planted when we landed. here in 1990. A quick look at the menu, which is divided into Pickles, Cold Starters, Hot Starters, Rice, Fish and Meat, and we let the host organize a small feast for us.
We start with some irreproachable torreznos with scrambled potatoes. We continue with a marinade –it couldn’t be missing– with orange ray that justifies the visit on its own. Then, an impeccably prepared boneless red mullet loin arrives at the table, with its absolutely crispy skin and an addictive accompaniment of soupy cod rice bound with egg.
The pochas stewed with pilpil de cocochas that come next are a flagship dish and are on their way to becoming another of the house staples. “Would you like some lamb brains and a veal gizzard?†proposes the boss. Who said fear! Two undeniably rogue mouthfuls of offal that here they try to make suitable for all audiences, watering the first with a generous wine reduction and burning the second over high heat.
Before arriving at the rice, which in this house seems essential to us, we had the opportunity to try some beef tripe with snout and leg floating on a resounding meat bottom that calls for dipping bread. With them comes an extra bowl of sauce, in this case very spicy, so that everyone can decide how cheerful they want their tripe. We season them profusely. Don’t stop doing it.
As for the rice, which is offered in various kinds, I opted for a paella with rabbit and snails, so difficult to find in Madrid, which my old comrade Alberto Luchini had recommended to me. “Prepared over a diffuser with Dynamite, a variety of bomba, his secret is that he uses slightly smoked rice with a rosemary aroma, to give it those notes of fire and countryside that the diffuser does not achieve. Accompanied by a very fine aioli, it is not exactly the same as those that can be had in the Sierra del Carche but it is quite closeâ€, writes Luchini in Siete CanÃbales. And I subscribe to each of his words.
For dessert, a tribute to El Olivo: the fine apple pie with olive oil and orange ice cream, which Vandelle brought to Las Cuatro Estaciones from her time at the Bordeaux restaurant Le Chapon Fin and later made it fashionable at all tables of capital power. A historic sweet, now more traditional than gala, which continues to be satisfactory.
“Honesty, quality, harmony, trade”, sums up the ideology of this Trust Fund on its website. It takes a short time but it already works like a well-oiled classic. Notice to late-night gourmets: the dinner shift accepts reservations until 11:45 p.m., which seems like a time absolutely worthy of the Fleming Coast. I have to go back soon to find out what atmosphere they spend at the stroke of midnight and put their cocktails to the test.
