Knight and Squire
Now we are finally back from vacation land, followed by vacation blues and back to the cruel reality of life that cuts your veins and takes your breath away (hint: not the good kind). Yes, I am referring to work. Since the weather, which had started to be nice after a month of straight raining, had gone to shit, we needed something grand to boost our spirit. Knight and Squire, aka: La casa de la hamburguesa, is located in the business centre of Madrid, near Plaza de Castilla. Well hidden between other shiny gourmet places, we almost missed it. The interior was slightly shabby, which seems to be an infallible sign of quality. Upper floor was full, so we moved our skinny butts to the basement. Downstars the walls are covered in old movie posters. And by old I don’t mean back to the future era. I mean old, old posters of actors even my parents are too young to remember. Movies like The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Yep, we spent a good 15 minutes just staring around in pure amazement.
The spiffiness off this place lies in the fact that they aren’t afraid to experiment and divert from the classics. Of course they have the typical hamburgers that the majority of people order, but the other part of burger menu was dedicated to the brave ones who would go for egg salad in middle of a salmonella outbreak; people like us.
Hermzz almost gave me a heart attack when he ordered sparkling mineral water, stating that he’d taken my comment about his beer belly seriously (psssst, he listens to me after all!!!!).
So then we showed our adventurous spirit. Hermzz bet on the “hamburguesa india” and I, since I was slower, had to settle for the “alemana”. The prices are epic; €4.60 per burger with a side of potatoes. I should be more specific here, the potatoes are Subway style potato chips and not french fries. So if you would like to get actual french fries you gotta order them apart. The food was delivered within the next ten minutes which was impressive considering the thickening clientèle. The tubby waiter had to improvise some really smooth moves to be able to dance between the tables.
The good thing about experimenting with different fancy shit on hamburgers is the moment of surprise. It can be the good kind or the bad kind. This time for us it was the good kind. The Indian burger had curry powder, raisins, the customary tomato and fresh onion, and a bit of sour orange marmalade. It was an open bun, what just basically means meat and some stuff was on one bun and then rest of it was on the other one. The proper way how to eat it is to either put the bottom on the top or the top on the bottom, but what you don’t do is first eat the bun with meat and then realize that you’re left with a bun and no meat. As you can see, even a normally smart dude like Hermzz can be dazed and confused when his hamburger isn’t served in the usual style. The German burger had some sauerkraut, lettuce, tomato and unforgettable fresh onion that I decently left at the side of the plate. Both combinations were rather hazardous, but boy were they worth it. The meat wasn’t particulary great, but the combination of tastes made it a pretty good meal.
The problem about the potato chips is that they don’t really fill you, so we had to order a desert. Not that we ever needed an excuse to do so. Cake isn’t really a spanish specialty, there are really just few places that can do a proper chocolate cake or even apple pie, so it wasn’t a big surprise for us that the desert wasn’t up to the standard of the hamburgers. Still, both the chocolate cake and the dulce de leche cake served their purpose and we left the restaurant well fed and satisfied.
- Fast and friendly service
- Apart from burgers this place also serves hot dogs!
- Amazing prices, no competition so far
- No french fries, boooooo
- Psychedelic interior
- It is a bit too far from the usual touristic routes
