We had dinner at Santceloni, located in the modern part of the city, about a twenty minute cab ride from our hotel. It's in the Hotel Hesperia, which looks like a pretty nice boutique hotel, at least from the thirty seconds we spent walking through it to the restaurant. Santceloni has two Michelin stars, and is the Madrid outpost of Can Fabes, one of the world's most famous restaurants outside of Barcelona. The restaurant is remarkably spacious, beautifully lit and really quite a different atmosphere from any other place we went to in Madrid. Service was fantastic, friendly but extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their jobs. We had the special market menu, which was course after course of really interesting, tasty dishes. It also meant that we had no idea what was coming, since it was dependent on whatever the chef found in the market that day. Spain's cuisine is very much in the spotlight now, and well known for all sorts of avant garde experimentation. Santceloni's not about that, but nor is it traditional Spanish food either. It's just very inventive food combinations, skillfully prepared and presented. The restaurant's signature dish is a cold poached egg with caviar and cauliflower puree, which I actually found a bit dull. But there was a great lobster dish, some nice frogs legs, which I usually resist but Somchai devours whenever he can, and sweetbreads, which I ate for the first time and really enjoyed. I feel a bit gross about it now since as I'm writing this I just had glands taken out of my throat, which is what sweetbreads are, but at the time, I was really pleasantly surprised. An even bigger surprise though, was Somchai's violent reaction when he learned what he was eating, since I thought he would pretty much eat anything. So after the sweetbreads encounter he pretty much hated the restaurant, but I ignored his feelings because they're biased. (Food-18, Decor-17, Service-19). Also we had a great bottle of Priorat with our dinner. That's a pretty well known wine now but at the time, was more of a cult wine, totally overshadowed by Spain's most famous wine, Rioja. It was my first bottle from that region, and really enjoyed it, much more mellow and balanced than Rioja, so we ended up drinking lots of it during the rest of our visit.