Madrid Foodie Corner: TonTon Chamberi
Some facts:
- Alice is a chef
- Alice is a very good chef
- Alice has a new restaurant
- It’s very good
One more:
- Alice is a friend
Which raises ethical considerations for the reviewer. After all, I have a strong interest in remaining friends which means you should absolutely not trust anything that comes out of my pen. But it doesn’t make me wrong when I say that TonTon is a TopTop spot.
It opened seriously in September, the brainchild of Alice’s business partner Bosco. Bosco is ex Soho-House which might just be the best designation going. It says Big Hospitality is behind him, and whilst he’s grateful for the experience, the independent food scene is more his thing. Plus it sounds a bit like being ex-KGB. Might Soho House have an intelligence division? Assassins for sure…
After his defection, he found a space just off Quevedo (an incredible old barn) and decked it out to his spec, although he tells me it’s not as destroyed as he would have liked. He was going for holes-in-the-walls vibes, but alas the architects had safety regs to uphold. Damn structural responsibilities!
Still, the vibe is smooth and earthy, the lights low and sexy. The perfect date spot perhaps (more on that later). There’s a bar in the front with the most fantastic single-piece stainless steel bartop. It will weather slowly, scratched with the kisses and fights amassed at a bar.
Then he found Alice. By chance, they say. A friend of a friend was having a drink with the friend of another friend, and they relayed Bosco’s search for a chef. That story is probably more accurate +- a friend, but the point is Parisian providence brought them together and TonTon began.
I’d found Alice in my own brush with providence four years earlier in Mexico and I became an evangelist after eating at FlavoFlavoFlavo, her pop-up in Barrio Condesa of Mexico City. It was just ridiculously cool and fun and I realised for the first time just what it might mean to have a friend-who’s-a-chef: good things, really good things.
So then comes TonTon. I came on a date (I told you!), partly because I needed an excuse to come. The date was lovely, TonTon was lovelier. You can guess which is still in my life. It took a cancellation to get a table which is a great sign, and when Bosco called me personally I snapped his arm off and cancelled my reservation at Mo De Movimiento, citing better plans. Sorry Mo.
We arrive early for our 8:30 reservation (unusally for me). Bosco greets us like old friends (we aren’t) and Alice too (we are). We sit and then we eat and we drink for the rest of the evening. It’s a simple game sometimes.
Food was almost entirely on recommendation from our virtuoso waiter. He was soft and funny and clearly loved everything he was serving. He said: ‘have the dorada with tomate lacto fermentado. So we had it. It was sharp and simple and clean. Thank you waiter.
Then try the ostras (con mignonenette de kombu). My first oyster, against all odds. Big and salty. Like Poseidon Eggs. I have since blamed it for everything that has come after, like Bourdain. Also there was fuet (con mantequilla de mostaza, pepinillo). I thought the butter was too buttery and I wanted stronger mustard. Then we had maize y mojillones al ajillo (garlic mussels in a maize soup thing) which was the absolute favourite of our lovely waiter. It was probably the most interesting and ambitious plate, but I don’t love maize. Not the dishes fault that, to be fair, and the mussely texture in the thick maizey sauce was fabulous in the mouth.
Then dessert. I always insist on having a little something something (sweet) at the end of proceedings so we shared the mousse de chocolate with salt and pepper and olive oil. The mousse was soft but strong, offset by the olivey oiliness of the olive oil; the chocolate was rich, and the salt lit the fuse that set everything alight in an explosion of chocolatey peppery olivey goodness. Quite simple, but TopTop in every way.
Then they brought us two HUGE glasses of mezcal (hard to find in Madrid), and the rest of the night disappeared in a blur of reds and blues and smiles and laughter. They probably won’t do the same for you, but the point is they do. And I love restaurants like that. Soul over the bottom line, and stripped back sexiness until the early hours.
- Food: 8.5/10
- Space: 8/10
- Service: 13/10
