International Tapas food tour in Madrid: Tapapiés festival

Oh, tapas, the quintessential feature of the sweet Spanish life. Let me take you on a tapas crawl in the madrileño neighbourhood of Lavapiés. Beware, because these aren’t just the regular tapas you can find everywhere, but an international version to eat your way around the world (and of course, they are celiac friendly).
 
 Are you ready to taste some delicious tapas? Let’s go!

Gluten-Free in Spain

On a side note, this will be the first feature on the new blog section "Going Gluten-Free in Spain". Being gluten-free at home might have its challenges some times, but if you add a different scenario, on a foreign place to the mix, that will put you out of your comfort zone for sure. Not only you have to learn about this new place you are living in, but start from zero about its costums, specially food and cuisine related.

Ever thought about visiting Spain? Be it for a quick trip or a longer stay, let me help you with valuable coeliacs tips and know-hows, I know a thing or two about Spain.

What is Tapapiés?

Credit: www.tapapies.com

Tapapies is an event/festival that takes place every year at Lavapiés neighbourhood in Madrid. This place is known for its unique mixture of nationalities living together (aka, the international neighbourhood),thus, this is the place to go if you want to try out international cuisine.
 
To honour this international background, they’ve created this Multicultural Tapa Tour, where not only you will found great food, but also live music and plays.  
 
What’s the meaning of Tapapiés, you might ask.  As a fun fact, this word does not exist in Spanish, but if we do the following math: Tapas + Lavapiés = Tapapiés. Easy right? ;)
 
Now let’s talk about food.
 
Most of Lavapiés restaurant participate in this event, offering the public a unique tapa that has been created specifically for this occasion. Curious? Check out all the delicious tapas, just waiting to be eaten. Price is 1,5€ per each tapa, and 2,5€ for tapa + beer (Estrella Damm).
 
There’s a competition to choose the best tapa of them all, and we, the public, have a lot to say about it. We can vote to our favourites one via the Tapapiés webpage or through an app (which is free and available at Apple Store and Google Play). It’s all as easy as walk around eating your way around the world, choose your favourite one and vote.
 
Be aware that there will be A LOT of people and most places here are quite tiny, so you might have to “swim” your way through the people, but that’s part of the experience. I’m just informing of how it looks like so you know what to expect (but there’s always so many people in Madrid anyway).

Gluten-free tapas

To my fellow coeliacs, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. A first glance to the tapas list didn’t make me feel very confident on whether I would be able to find something gluten-free, but hope is the last thing to lose, they say.  After scrolling through the whole list I found a place where they clearly stated that their tapa was gluten-free (would it surprise if I tell you that it was a taco?) Sadly this was the only restaurant making such a clear claim; none of the others mentioned it. It was explained, however, what the tapas consisted on; and after seeing that many mentioned naturally gluten-free ingredients, I thought that I could give it a try and ask in person about it. This turned out to be a great idea, as I was able to discover some more places.
 
I didn’t encounter any problem when asking about gluten-free, they were all really nice, but again, let me remember you that there will be quite a lot of people, and at rush hour they might not be able to give you the same service as oppose to when it’s more slow.

Antigua Taquería.

Who wants some tacos? This was the restaurant advertised as gluten-free (and vegetarian) friendly, as it was made from 100% corn tortilla, cheese, mushrooms and roselle. The tapa name was “Flor de Jamaica” (Jamaican flower).
 
Needless to say, I repeated.

Antigua Taquería
Cabestreros 4, Madrid | Metro Lavapiés

África Fusión

I came across this place by chance, while I was doing my tour around the neighbourhood. This tapa is called "Maffe" and comes all the way from Senegal. It consists of meat in peanut and vegetables sauce (you can clearly see the carrots and something like potato) with a side of white rice. I’m not an expert on African food, so all what I can say is that it reminded me of Ethiopian food (a cuisine that I really like), but softer. If you like this type of spicy food, I’d strongly suggest you this tapa. The sauce was creamy and with perfect consistency (not too thick, not too fluid) and the rice was on point.

África Fusión
Argumosa 14, Madrid | Metro Lavapiés

Saboor Tapioca

Let’s travel to Brazil! The tapa being offered here was not celiac friendly, as “Coxinha” is made of wheat flour, but I was able to get a gluten-free dessert to end my foodie night. The Beijinho is basically condensed milk and grated coconut. It being so suave and sweet, that "kiss" seems like a perfect name for it (beijinho means kiss in portuguese).
 
I was told that (outside of the Tapapies event) they have many more dishes and that they use tapioca flour. I will let you know my impressions of this Portuguese-Brazilian food style restaurant once I come back.

 Saboor Tapioca
de la Fe 1, Madrid | Metro Lavapiés

Final thoughts

To wrap up, this event turned out to be a very interesting experience. Despite not having a clear statement from the organizers on whether there were any gluten-free choices, I still had the opportunity to taste some tapas from all over the world, which was a fantastic and convenient opportunity, as I just had to go for a little stroll around Lavapiés neighbourhood. I'm happy I had the courage to start talking to the restaurants in person, as I was able to find more choices that were gluten-free. This is me encouraging you to go out and enjoy your life as usual, don't feel down because of the gluten-free diet :).

The atmosphere was lively and a perfect alternative to the traditional after-work evening. I would like to make the wish that for future festivals they will keep the coeliac community in mind; perhaps a collaboration with coeliac associations to provide some input on? (It's not just about using the right ingredients, but not messing it up when preparing and manipulating the food.) Morever,  how great would it be to not only be able to enjoy a gluten-free tapa, but having our own gluten-free tapas crawl?


Have you ever attended Tapapiés festival? How do you deal when attending an event not knowing whether there will be gluten-free options?

EggsGlutenacious Life attended this event at own cost and has no bussiness relationship with the mentioned places.

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