Hermanos Vinagre Review: ‘Good Food, Great Walls’
Hermanos Vinagre tonight? Max texted me. He was en route from the airport and had one thing on his mind. Down, I replied.
Hermanos Vinagre has a few spots about the place, but it feels like it doesn’t. Which is as much as anyone can hope for without holding their success against them. The Chamberi location just off Fuencarral and Olavide is their third. It’s a corner place, and the bar looks a little like Hopper’s ‘Nighthawk,’ except it’s bright red and white, there are more stripes than plain wall, and it’s absolutely packed. On a Monday. We were glad to have a reservation.
The bar is cool, but the green dining room is cooler. Yes, it’s tight, meaning that jackets and scarves and bags and all the, you know, normal stuff a normal person might bring to a restaurant have to be stuffed into a undignified pile on the bench, probably spilling over into the next table’s gazpacho, and bags and headphones have to be balanced on the wafer thin shelf behind the bench, probably dangling down into the next table’s salmorejo.
But none of it matters because this is a cool as hell dining room. The green is sexy and aggressive. I want to bottle it, I want to wear it, I want to embody it. The tops of the walls are ingeniously lined with a sliver of mirror that makes it feel at least 42x bigger than it is, and the beer vessel (vessel? Big keg?) that bookends the dining room is satisfyingly large. It stores our beer for us too. Thank you, beer vessel.
Beautiful. Table at 9… Max texted me.
Nothing else required, and we duly met at 9, like in the olden days when you’d make a plan and stick to it. I arrived late, but Max and I have a shared belief that within plans there is always an implicit ish. Therefore: 9ish, and my sins are forgiven.
We’d been to Hermanos Vinagre before and had a fantastic meal. It was like we were swept along by an ineffable current. Tables left and right recommended us plates, and us them. We drank cañas, very plurally. We ordered and ordered, service coming faster than we could handle. And we returned to the street, satisfied, full, and feeling somewhat like we’d just fallen down a rabbithole into a tapas dreamworld.
This time was a little different. We were more, six, seven, and then eight of us at a point as timings got lost in translation and varying degrees of friendship. I don’t love big tables, especially when the table is tiny.
Still, the food was great. We ordered, well, for half of the food we weren’t entirely sure what it was we’d ordered. Even for good Spanish and pooled minds, the menu is a challenge. We started with some classics. A croqueton de jamon iberico, because obviously. They’re cylindrical and huge, with a crunchy skin and warm, substantial innards. A good croqueton in my book.
Then chicharonnes de Cadiz (quite moist and very thin cuts of pork). I didn’t get to try those though because they disappeared before they arrived. I thought we’d agreed to wait for a friend, so we waited, the friend arrived and so vanished the chicharonnes. It’s fine though, I was otherwise engaged in a tango with some boquerones en vinagre (anchovies). They were sharp, really sharp and tangy.
Then we went rogue. Mejillones (mussels) arrived in an ‘escabeche ahumado,’ a smoked marinade that read like a Bloody Mary. It was tomatoey and spicy and lush, although the mussels added little in the title role. Then more sea: berberechos (cockles) with two sauces, picante and lima. They were much stronger than the mussels, strong enough to separate the adults from the children.
Then patatas bravas (twice). Little cubes of fried potato, with an especially smokey sauce. A classic, consumed very easily. Gambas al ajillo (shrimp in garlic) appeared at some point (no one was entirely sure when) and promptly disappeared. Very tasty too.
And that was pretty much it. Until the waitress brought us a Flan de Huevo y vainilla (possibly by mistake) and lots of tiny little spoons (the smaller the spoon the better). It was sweet and soft, too sweet for some of my companions but delicious to my taste. It was the perfect final note.
And that was that. Good food, great atmosphere, some very Spanish service (your interpretation), and my favourite walls in Madrid.
- Food: 8/10
- Value: 8/10
- Service: 7/10
- Green Walls: 9/10
Written by: Barnaby Shand
Hermanos Vinagre