It's hard being a walk-in party of ten on a Friday night. You might as well all wear matching signs that say "Sucker." The fact is, any restaurant worth sitting down at will be booked solid on a Saturday night; the ones that are not are the strugglers and failers, whose general sad desperation is reliably reflected in that of the waitstaff, who will rob you blind without blinking.
But in Madrid that is the situation we found ourselves in. My friend D and I had a few tip-offs for chaotic tapas bars, but everyone (notably his wife / my friend E, the reason we were all in Madrid in the first place) preferred to sit down after a hard days' museum viewing. For twenty minutes all ten of us ricocheted around Calle Cava Baja, rejecting restaurant after restaurant for being either too slammed or too disturbingly calm. Finally D made an admirable well-intentioned capital-dee Decision and convinced everyone to wait still longer for a half-promised table at a what was quite plainly a sinister rip-off joint for old-school geezers.*
Everyone but me. Immune to shame, I told everyone I'd return when the table was ready and I popped off solo to revisit one of the recommended manic tapas bars we'd passed earlier, Taberna Tempranillo.
