This Salamanca seafood temple debuted in 1966 and now belongs to Miguel García Gómez. The sprawling restaurant has multiple rooms, tile floors, maritime paintings, diving helmets, model ships, ship’s steering wheels, and servers in white coats, but no music. Considering La Trainera has an entire section of their menu where ingredients are available per 100 grams, the bill is bound to get expensive. Then again, it probably should be for Necora crab, percebes Gallegos, and King prawns. Langostinos are one of the better values, prepared a la plancha and finished with sea salt. If angulas are in season, spring on them. The delicate, boneless baby eels are barely cooked and drape beautifully over flaky snow white hake fillets, which are coated in a light egg batter and pan-fried with olive oil and garlic.

This fashionable ice cream parlor from Carlos Sotomayor and Carmelo Rodríguez resides in Madrid’s trendy Chueca neighborhood. The space features reclaimed wood and white tile, and crates of fresh fruit for juicing. Mistura also makes cakes, brownies, muffins, waffles and crepes, but ice cream is the primary focus. The name refers to your ability to mix toppings with ice cream on a slab, a lot like Cold Stone in the States, but in my opinion, doing so would do a disservice to the core ingredients. Nata (sweet cream) and rich, gooey caramel flor de sal (salted chocolate) are both must order flavors.

Javier Bonet has carved out a nice culinary niche in Chamberí, including nearby Muta, which rotates their dinner menu monthly, and Sala de Despiece. This trendy tapas bar features a white corrugated metal front, punctuated with a barcode. Inside, the walls and ceiling are lined with crates previously used to hold meat and seafood. Fish, cow and knife diagrams line the wall. A yellow barrier above the white bar separates chefs from guests and comes branded with Carga y Descarga. Silver stools are a hot commodity, though people are happy to stand on the blue floor. Every dish is handwritten on the menu and and listed by product, ingredients, preparation and origin. There’s no doubt what you’ll be eating, as long as you speak Spanish. Especially good dishes included plump Galician octopus, cooked a la plancha and spooned with chimichurri; and La Fidea sweetbreads served a la plancha with mustard-based sauce. Sala de Despiece’s essential dessert is Flan de Queso, a creamy Brie flan served in a jar with either caramel, chocolate or “red fruit” at the base, and a packet of crispy toasted quinoa to sprinkle up top.

This side-street specialty coffeehouse, which dates to 2011 in Conde Duque, features art-lined tile and brick walls, concrete floors, and people huddled over wood benches and counters. Their premium coffee program includes a La Marzocco Strada three-group espresso machine and a variety of pourover coffee devices (V60, Chemex, Kalita Wave and Aeropress). Toma sources beans from three roasters, including Right Side Coffee Roasters, and plan to roast themselves beginning in 2015. Their espresso drinks and filtro, filtered, pourover coffee, are both good bets. Baristas will gladly suggest specific single-origin roasts. Trust them.