Have you recently walked around the upper part of Zurbano Street? Between José Abascal and Rafael Calvo there is a string of restaurants with a traveling vocation and undeniable appeal, as if they wanted to compete with the pull of Ponzano Street, a few blocks further west in the same Chamberí neighborhood: from the Japanese Izariya to the Argentine grill The Enemy, passing through the Chinese Soy Kitchen, the Colombian Quimbaya or the unclassifiable Nodrama. But is there an audience in Madrid for so many restaurants with gastronomic ambition? It looks like it is.
I had read mixed opinions about Nodrama, before visiting it the other day. My admired colleague José Carlos Capel defined it a year or so ago in El País as “a breath of fresh air, signature cuisine with instinct, originality and technique.” While Julia Pérez (Gastroactitud), in tune, highlighted “solid, well-constructed recipes” and “a different style that moves away from the clonal offering of many places in the city.” However, our beloved Fernando Point (El Mundo) spoke about lights and shadows in an article titled “Great cuisine, worse hospitality.”
Reading a little more about the project, I learned that Pablo Fernández is a professional born in Valparaíso (Chile), who has divided his career between Madrid (working with Fernando Arellano and then with Sergi Arola), Lima (Gastón Acurio) or London (Helène Darroze, Gordon Ramsay, Éric Fréchon), culminating his British stage in Dabiz Muñoz’s failed StreetXo and returning with it to the peninsula when that adventure in Mayfair ended.
In December 2021, he decided to create his own project, settling at 67 Zurbano, well surrounded by exotic eateries. Under the name Nodrama – which means exactly that – this restless chef and restaurateur proposes an eclectic menu, impossible to classify, in a neutral, bright and minimalist decor with a Nordic atmosphere and a vocation to obtain laurels in the guides.
In the center of the room, with capacity for 24 diners, there is a large Japanese bar and an open kitchen. The host finishes all the dishes at the pass, in front of the diner, interacts with you, explains each bite, with its ingredients and techniques. In the eight-stage tasting menu, called Festival (€75) and which changes with the seasons, there is room for a mix of French, Italian, Asian and even New Andean or Nikei recipes, all presented on tableware with attractive designs.
Author fusion? Not at all, since Fernández does not reduce his proposal to a concept nor does he seem to have a fondness for daring concoctions. Theirs is an absolutely free and undoubtedly cosmopolitan cuisine that evolves at the whim of the chef’s inspiration and, where yesterday it could include niguiris or ramen, today it confuses you with some pickled mussels – of course, with yellow chili – or a very transalpine salad with various types of tomatoes.
Once seated at the table and after browsing a wine list that highlights some small producers from France and the New World, we enjoyed a good Galician bread with smoked sheep’s butter, followed by a delicious mini tuna tartlet with aji panca chili. and yolk cured in white miso. After the mussels and tomatoes mentioned above – two diversions to get into the subject – came a succession of four quite impeccable dishes: an unctuous egg with kataifi in chicken chili with smoked caviar; a succulent lobster and oyster suquet with straw and hay style tagliolini, garnished with crème fraîche and more caviar; a tasty squid ragout dumpling with shiitake mushrooms and laksa and the last bonito of the season, just cooked, accompanied by a lemon sauce with (more) crème fraîche that lacked a punch of spiciness to lift it up a bit. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a couple of turns of the pepper mill.
My friend Alberto Luchini had already warned me about Nodrama’s restraint on spicy food and our dinner confirmed this trend. On the other side of the scale, here there is knowledge of the product and techniques and a very good hand with the funds and sauces.
In the dessert section, the refreshing yogurt and galangal ice cream with dehydrated strawberries gave way to a willing – and overly sweet – version of the classic rum baba, where we missed that the cake tasted more like butter and agricultural rum, as it Alain Ducasse usually serves it in almost all his restaurants, and not so much an impertinent syrup that managed to neutralize that acidic and lactic touch that crème fraîche whipped with a pinch of sugar should provide. To sweeten the dish, that rich pineapple candy lace was enough. We will never tire of demanding less sweet desserts here…
And this is what gave our menu. For this newly released autumn, the restaurant is going to launch the option of being able to order à la carte, choosing from the highlights of the next menu, which we think are very tasty: from white beans with rabbit stewed in vine shoots to some gnocchi with Carril clams and bottarga, through creamy mushroom rice with roasted quail or wild boar cannelloni with Thai red curry sauce.
We will have to come back to try some of this or to enjoy – before the good weather goes – its secluded outdoor terrace, with tapas for an informal snack with the crab bao, the tripe croquettes or the hamburger in bread. brioche, with Gruyère cheese and chipotle mayonnaise. That is, if the boss has not changed everything, as is his custom. But don’t worry, although the menu tends to be 100% renewed every few months, Nodrama’s style remains – in its own way – unchanged.
