Last Saturday, Olga, Carmen (my trusty partners in food crime) and I decided to flit off to Madrid for a sushi lunch and a mooch about la capital.
Said lunch was provided by a Japanese restaurant called Kokoro, a stylish but tiny place – you absolutely need to reserve a table. The food was simple, and out of this world.
The sashimi was so fresh, it didn’t smell in the least bit fishy, and it just melted in your mouth… divine!
Sea urchin sushi. We were told the tiny spiny creatures were in season right now and not to be missed. I don’t much appreciate the texture, so I declined, but Olga and Carmen decided to go for it.
A metal bollard enveloped in a knitted cozy. Is the poor wee thing feeling the cold…? Do people keep stubbing their toes on it…?
No. Turns out, the bollard was right outside a knit shop, who hijacked it for advertising purposes.
Well, this is just the kind of guerrilla advertising that I like 😉 Next up is the kind I detest. Some of you may have heard about this, but it’s so scandalous, I feel impelled to make the point.
You see it?!?
In June this year, Madrid’s ‘Sol’ metro station, located right in the city centre at Puerta Del Sol, sold out to British mobile phone giant Vodafone for €3 million. It was duly renamed ‘Vodafone Sol’. Also, (metro) Line 2, traditionally depicted on metro maps in the colour red (which happens to be the colour of Vodafone’s logo), became ‘Linea 2 Vodafone’.
Needless to say, this move was and is(!) deeply unpopular. It’s one thing to sponsor a sporting event that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, and plaster your name all over it, but adveraping (I just made that word up – reckon it’ll catch on…?) the heart of a capital city is just beyond the pale 😦 What’s it going to be next? The Krispy Kremlin?!
Moving on to cheerier things… a food market!
Christmas decorations were up 🙂
A pile of crusty loaves the size of a four-year-old
A fresh batch of churros being scooped from the hot fat.
Here they are, in all their crispy, grease-infused glory.
Prefer yours dipped in chocolate? No problem!
Worried about your arteries clogging up? Just let it go…
…because, as this window (of an evidently Irish) bar proclaims, “Enjoy life without fear – there’s plenty of time to be dead”
Lady Of The Cakes 
So many thoughts and feelingses!
First of all, I cannot believe my sacred, touristy, dirty, fabulous, clubby, souveniry, kinda-dangerous-by-night-but-totally-not, Irish-pub-heaven Sol got defiled like this! I object!!! I lived at Sol on Friday and Saturday nights! I want to cry right now.
As a media professional, I want to know whether anyone at V (will NOT spell out the name) wondered if this kind of ‘campaign’ will attract such negative word of mouth that it will actually hurt the brand. This is really disgusting.
Onto the good.
All that beautiful raw fish just brought me to a big O. It’s basically the opposite of what sushi is like in Russia. And then that beautiful bread…let’s just say – multiples 😉
PS – I wish I was kidding. My heart is still beating at an unhealthy rate looking at those food photos.
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Re V’s branding strategy – my thoughts exactly. You cannot be forcing it down people’s throats like that.
Glad I got your heart racing… at least I still do it for someone 😉
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Oooooh, food porn!!! Those loaves of bread. Wow!
Adveraped! Maybe it will next year’s word of the year? 😉
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BUT YOU LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE GLORIOUS BREAD!
That would warrant another blog entry 😉
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According to you 😉
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Chocolate churros. Raw fish. Bollards.
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I think only about five or so people are going to get this, lol 😉
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Ah, you’ve got to love the Irish (bars)!
Ugh, anything tiny and spiny is definitely not for me… Churros though, yes! Yes, yes, yes 😉 And that metro sellout – adveraping indeed. That is totally going to catch on! 🙂
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And you’re a pro, so I totally trust your judgement!
Make that adveraping™
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Good thinking! 🙂 Or ginking… hmm.
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first: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! how could they do that to the metro in Sol?!?!?!?! omg, omg, omg. beyond the pale indeed. bad enough we have every sports stadium named for some corporation, now this??? I’m glad it’s unpopular. maybe it can be reversed?
love the sushi photos. I want some now. oh, yum. love that last photo. it’s so true you know? plenty of time to be dead indeed. heh.
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The sushi was really good… I bet you have a sushi rolling mat in your kitchen. Go on, admit it!
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nope, never made sushi. should put that on my list of things to accomplish eh? 😉
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If anyone can do it, it’s you.
Go on, you know the cats want you to!
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LOL! thanks for the vote of confidence. one can do whatever one puts their mind to. I live by that!!
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Indeed! And if the kittehs want sushi, who are you to deny it to them!
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right on 😉
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Those are churros the way the heavens intended them to be!
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I like to dunk my own churros 🙂
I was last in Madrid in a very cold February, and this is the first I’ve heard of the V_____ thing with Sol and line 2. Moderately disgusted. It would be enough to make me boycott the company’s goods and services, but I don’t use them anyway!
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But if you had to eat them on the go…? 😉
It is a bad thing… and unless you’re Lady Gaga, not all publicity is good publicity. Ill conceived, as a marketing strategy.
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