CLOSED: La Mazorca

Of the 25 places currently listed on the Happy Cow Website, :-) we randomly selected this location based upon its close proximately to the Reina Sofia and the local night life. We were not disappointed. It had a nice, welcoming, laid back atmosphere with quite a friendly staff. They were more than willing to go through the vegan options with me. Although (I believe) all of the salads include cheese and non-vegan salad dressing, they can also be made vegan as well. We dined early (early by Spanish standards) on a Saturday evening . . . not long after they opened. It was relatively empty initially, but within 30/45 minutes every table was full . . . I recommend an early arrival - at least on the weekends. Vegan options were limited, but I was satisfied with the dishes I ordered (Salad, Spaghetti, Seiten), as were my non-vegan vegetarian travel companions.

For those who do not like to eat very late, Madrid is an awkward city and this place is no exception. But having had an (early) meal at a dreadful pizza place the night before, we thought we would go to a proper restaurant. Looking at the earlier reviews, we had no trouble getting in and, on a Thursday in February, it was about half full. It is fine as a place and the owner was friendly and spoke adequate English. But I find it hard to square the glowing descriptions of the food quality in some of the reviews. One thing to say is that they barely undertood what being vegan meant, let alone cater for such people. Only one dish, the slices of seitan, was vegan but no desserts and, amazingly, none of the salads. So, with no vegetables served with the main courses either, it was a flat meal for my vegan wife. The food was eatable and tasty but hardly gourmet and not well presented. After this, we stayed in and cooked for ourselves the next two nights. By the way, many of the supermarkets have large health food secitons with a wide range of vegetarian and vegan products.