Restaurant review; Shapla in Lavapiez, Madrid 7,5 out of 10

GCH reviews; Shapla, Lavapiez Madrid.

I guess this blog should undergo a temporary change and this post will be in english.

If you eat out at a lot of places like me then I find it very easy to forget the quality of food etc of a place you visit. You go back to the same place again and you remind yourself "ohh yeah, this was the place with the angry waiter and the shitty naan" Hence the new idea to write down the thoughts like I will start to do in these reviews.

So the place under the lupe is Shapla, an indian restaurant among many in Lavapiéz. If you ever been to Lavapiéz then you would know that it is chalk-full of indian restaurants and there is a central plaza where there is probably 15 restaurants and maybe 10 of them are indian. During the evening, the tables and chairs takes over the streets and there is plenty of "marketeers" trying to get you to sit down at their restaurants. Not really my cup of tea but if you have been in Madrid for awhile then your skin will get thicker since you often get approached by people trying to get you in to their stripclub, their restaurant or their bar. Another thing I noticed is that it seems that there is always someone that tries to sell you cannabis, hope (and believe) that I do not have an aura of a smoker but I get approached every time I am there.

Well, onto the food. We get served complimentary papardam with this weirdlooking cleargreen sauce with a taste of mint that seems to be very popular here at the indian restaurants. Not a big fan of that sauce but I do like papardam and free stuff :D.

The menu of my choice was the menu of the day/night and you could choose from a bunch of different starters, a few main courses, naan/rice/pilaf as the side and then a dessert. I chose the chicken samosa. Thought it was pretty great. It was served with a brown sauce that was quite nice, it was needed since the pastry and the chicken was quite dry This might sound quite strange but I actually think certain types of dry chicken can have its charm, I think this worked out fine. All in all a decent starter.

The tikka masala was also pretty decent, the naan was pretty nice. You will not get blown away but I think it was more or less satisfying.

I chose dulce lacchi as my dessert. Lacchi is always quite thick and if you are not in the mood for something like that then it can be pretty hard to get down. This was the case this evening and nothing really tastes great if you are not in the mood. My friend took the mango lacchi and it was more refreshing and he was very satisfied.

We were also offered complimentary schnaps which was a nice apertif.

The menu btw was 9:50€, you have to consider that pretty cheap so if you are looking for indian food on the lower-mid pricerange then this would be a good alternative

Grade; 7,5 of 10 GCHs