Organic lunching

Here´s a scene for you. Madrid, January 3rd, 3 pm. Five thirty-something friends sit around a table, discussing the food scene. They grumble. What´s with all the phony lemongrass, they say? Why can´t you find a decent croqueta for love or money in the old centre? Is everyone stupid, on a diet, or don´t they care?

Head wags all around the table. Meanwhile, the three cakes they´ve been sharing are reduced to a sprinkling of crumbs. One of the five, let´s call him J, is eating those, and looks like he´ll have to be forcibly restrained from licking the plate clean.

Hardly a sign of bad food, you´ll say. And you´ll be right.

This was at  Pausa . And Pausa, mercifully, isn´t one of your faux-fusion, balsamic-doodling, totally clueless houses of hunger. Neither is it one of your fake-regional, done up in plastic wood, who do you think you´re fooling with all that talk of "grandmother´s style" horrors. No sir. Pausa´s only fad is a belief in simplicity, and you can hardly call that a fad.

It´s the only place in town where every last thing is organic. Not a fad. They´ve sourced beers, coffe, wine, juices, sugars, you name it. They bake their own bread every morning. The food, while healthy, has no smack of self-righteousness, and no lurking veganisms of the soy bacon type. Here bacon is bacon, from pigs of the best families, and if you don´t want that, there´s plenty of garbanzos to choose from. Just the attitude. And it tastes really good, too.

There are so few places where you can eat a bowl of soup and a made-to-order focaccia sandwich, quickly. And sit in actual chairs, at real tables, not on barstools, facing a wall. And they have free Wi-Fi. The perfect lunch spot, in short. And if you´re rushed, they do takeaway, too.
Just my luck that it´s a tad far away from my flat. I never thought I´d say this, but those masses of office workers around Plaza de Castilla have all the luck.

Pausa. C/ Estébanez Calderón 3 . 91 425 18 87