Kyle Chayka Is Eating Through His Jet Lag

Back home in Washington, D.C., The New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka and his wife, Jess, cook “constantly and elaborately,” he says. (Their home is conveniently sandwiched between two farmers’ markets.) This week, though, Chayka spent exactly zero time there. “It’s not an uncommon occurrence,” he says, “since D.C. is a city that people only live in to leave every weekend.” Instead, he dashed off to Madrid for the culture festival Pública to talk about his most recent book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, before stopping back in New York for some traditional Balkan cabbage rolls, onigiri, and slightly elevated Super Bowl fare.

Tuesday, February 4
I start the day in midair over the Atlantic Ocean on a British Airways flight en route to Madrid via London. I have an entire economy row to myself and sleep most of the way, until I chew an inedible egg-and-cheese-sandwich thing right at the end of the flight while fast-forwarding through Anyone But You, which I am surprised to discover takes place in Australia.

At Heathrow in the morning, there are more people drinking beer than coffee, which I want desperately. I hunt through the luxury-brand boutiques and find a single Caffe Nero stand operating out of a car trunk. My cortado is mediocre but necessary. The good thing about Heathrow is you can always find boxed triangle sandwiches. At a convenient Boots, I buy a cheese-and-onion sandwich, a packet of Walker’s cheese-and-onion chips, and a bottle of green juice — for health. (My wife, Jess, was born outside of London, and I have absorbed my taste in British products from her.) The connecting flight to Madrid is just long enough to get extremely hungry, and I finish everything despite the fact that much better food awaits in Spain. I pay three euros for an onboard Iberia coffee to keep myself alive.

The net result is that I’m caffeinated enough to get from the airport to my Airbnb on the subway. Madrid is one of my favorite cities in the world because all I really care about is eating and drinking, and that’s all anyone does here. France and Italy are fine, but Spain reaches the terminal velocity of hanging out. It’s my fourth visit, and each time, I’ve stayed in Lavapiés, an off-center neighborhood that’s full of cool restaurants, bars, and stores.

I have a Nespresso coffee at my Airbnb before meeting Iñigo García Ureta, an editor at my Spanish book publisher, Gatopardo, for a drink nearby. He takes me to Sala Equis, a porn theater turned bar with a dramatic industrial interior. I get a draft beer, and he has a Red Bull because he has to keep working. But I am in another country! We leave as a drag show is starting, and I head to Sala de Despiece, a Madrid culinary institution of the Chef’s Table genre. I’ve booked a solo seat at the bar; Iñigo is taken aback by the earliness of an 8 p.m. reservation.

Sala de Despiece is modeled after a traditional Spanish butcher shop, but turned into a kind of clinical Damien Hirst installation with gleaming white countertops and steel shelving. Slightly delirious with jet lag, I take in the meat performance. It’s a combination of omakase counter and Salt Bae; the chef-bartenders roll up little bundles of beef and pork and fish in front of you. I order the signature fried artichoke topped with caviar; a tray of grilled white shrimp with their shells on; tomato chunks rolled in cured tuna; and an entire limb of grilled octopus with muhammara and squid-ink sauce. Alongside it, I have glasses of Albariño and Garnacha Blanca. Spanish wine remains underrated IMO; the whites always have perfectly maxed-out acidity and salinity. Finally, I get one of the best desserts of my life: a whole lemon with its flesh carved out and replaced with lemon ice cream, cut into slices and topped with a dusting of a salty, sugary burnt-lemon mix — think a Sour Patch Kid made by Nara Smith. Pair that with a Verdejo that’s also lemony. The diners on either side of me (Americans too, of course) copy my order. It all comes to under $100, which feels like a deal. I traipse back to my Airbnb and pass out.

Wednesday, February 5
I’m staying down the street from Bar Benteveo, a low-key place open from morning to midnight. Jess and I came across it on a trip to Madrid years ago, and I make a point to stop in as many times as I possibly can. After two preparatory Nespressos, I order tomato-brushed toast draped with slices of Spanish ham and a cappuccino. (I believe that one European coffee is equal to about one-half of an American coffee, but it always seems gauche to order more than one.) Part of my book is about how international travel culture has become homogenized: We all visit the same Instagram-friendly sites and restaurants, and if they’re not literally the same, they all have the same minimalist, antiseptic vibe, which I call AirSpace. My solution has been to seek out perfectly unassuming places — such as Bar Benteveo — and go back again and again.

I have to do a TV interview for the festival at the Circulo de Bellas Artes, a huge 19th-century interdisciplinary cultural center and theater. (What if Americans actually supported the arts? Guess we’ll never know.) Thankfully, it only takes three minutes.

The venue is near Madrid’s museum district, so I walk over to the Thyssen-Bornemisza art museum, which also happens to be one of my favorites; it’s like if the Met got edited down to only the absolute best stuff from the entire history of Western art. (My eye catches a huge Donald Baechler painting of beach balls and a small, sultry Bernini sculpture of Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows.) The midafternoon hunger pangs start to become an emergency, so I walk a few blocks and find a tapas bar called Granja Blanca. It is exceedingly average, but I inhale a glass of vermouth, a dish of olives and picked onions, and five out of eight wan ham croquettes that come atop half a sliced tomato drizzled with balsamic. (The most vegetables I will consume in Spain.)

Later, I drink another Nespresso at the Airbnb and then meet my friend Marta Peirano at Corchito, a newish Lavapiés natural-wine bar. I think natty wine bars have picked up where coffee shops left off as the new symbol of AirSpace. Still, Marta and I agree that Corchito is a good specimen in our digital dystopia and we drink glasses of well-rounded orange wine from Aristu, a producer in Navarre in northern Spain. All we can talk about is how Elon Musk is taking over the government, which I see happening every time I look at my phone.

The festival is hosting a dinner at Club Matador, which is described to me as Madrid’s version of Soho House. It’s a members club that emerged out of the glossy annual Matador magazine, which led to a creative agency called Fabrica, which is a cultural force in Spain and helps host the festival that I’m here for. You know, one of those things. The club is in a swankily remodeled 19th-century mansion and decorated like a bachelor pad, complete with sherry-focused speakeasies and sushi bars behind hidden doors. I ask for a glass of Cava before dinner, trying to stay local, but they say they only have Champagne, so I end up drinking that all night as the glass gets continuously refilled over my shoulder.

At dinner, I chat with the British graphic designer Fernando Gutiérrez and eat a series of distractingly delicious dishes that include braised leek sprinkled with bread crumbs, Iberico pork tenderloin, and Basque cheesecake with raspberry ice cream. My Champagne-induced fuzziness is intensified by jet lag, and I flee back to my Airbnb. I recall hearing one phrase repeatedly: “Sherry is actually very interesting.”

Thursday, February 6
Wake-up Nespresso, and back to Bar Benteveo, where this time I order a Spanish tortilla with bread for breakfast (carbs on carbs), with a cappuccino and a fresh-squeezed orange juice from one of those cool machines that I want to have in my house. I take an incredible tour of the Prado museum’s top-floor conservation studios thanks to my friend Francisco (Curro) Tardío, its head of international relations. The sight of an El Greco altar piece taken out of its mount and laid under a skylight, with the artist’s dashed brushstrokes of color testing visible on the exposed canvas, moves me to tears.

At 1 p.m., I head back to the theater to participate in a traditional event where festival ticket holders can sign up to have a beer with a speaker. It used to be coffee, but now the beer is literal. I drink a bottle of Señor Mendrugo pilsner during a fun conversation with an art journalist, a curator, and employees of what they describe as the Palantir of Spain; obviously we talk about Elon Musk taking over the U.S. government. After the beer, I get lunch nearby with Curro and Iñigo at a Basque restaurant in the basement of Euskal Etxea, a Basque cultural center. I order a glass of white Txakolina (Spanish wine!) while they wisely drink water, but I think a glass is always justified before getting onstage. We share squid in ink with rice, fried bacalao, and a bean stew with blood sausage. The beans are really the star of the show. Curro suggests cheesecake, then I have an espresso. The meal takes the appropriate two hours.

After the panel discussion, we head across the street to an old-school tapas bar called Bar Casa Monolo, a post-theater destination. The vibe is great, but my attempt to order vermouth on tap rather than from a bottle fails. Still, pretty much any Spanish vermouth will do for me. It doesn’t really count as drinking, does it?

I head back to Lavapiés with Marta and her friend Elizabeth Duval, a trans poet and author who became the secretary of communication for the new left political party in Spain; she gets stopped on the street for selfies as we embark on a bar crawl.

Our first stop is Vinícola Mentridana; I have another Albariño and a Garnacha Blanca, and we order torreznos, a traditional bar snack that Elizabeth says is getting trendy again: bits of deep-fried pork belly speared on toothpicks. Next, at Tabanco Amores, we get a bottle of natural red Garnacha made by Bodegabierto and plates of boquerones in vinegar with potato chips, chunks of marinated and fried dogfish, and hand-sliced ham. That’s dinner. Vegetable count: negligible. This isn’t a cigarette diet, so I’m not going to add them up, but I apologize to my lungs.

Marta and Elizabeth want to go to Candela, an infamous flamenco bar that closed a few years ago and was recently renovated. There’s a line, but eventually we make it into the packed subterranean space. I order a beer; Marta and Elizabeth get glasses of red wine, which I think is cool — red wine in the club. There’s a DJ in the corner spinning what I’m told are back-to-back flamenco classics. It’s happy chaos. It might be more sanitized than it was a decade ago, but you don’t have to worry so much about your wallet getting stolen. Is this the Nightmoves of Madrid?

Friday, February 7
Last Nespresso pod. It’s time to leave Madrid, but my flight isn’t until this afternoon, so I go to Acid Bake House, another austere, industrial-vibe coffee shop that also makes the best cardamom buns (a Scandinavian invention) that I’ve ever had. Maybe the cinnamon dust on top has MSG in it. I have a bun and a cortado, buy replacement Nespresso pods at the grocery store, then attempt to pack.

I always get to the airport very early because I hate rushing to a flight and I unabashedly love airports; they’re also full of people hanging out aimlessly, eating and drinking. For lunch, I get a cured-ham and Manchego sandwich, a bottle of gazpacho, and a fresh-squeezed orange juice. I also buy some more cured ham and Manchego to smuggle back into the U.S. I pick up a Caesar-chicken wrap for emergency airplane food, which is a good choice because dinner on the nine-hour flight is a bizarre pasta with diced pickles in it.

I have a row to myself again, but I stay up the whole flight, writing a column and watching the artsy, meta, mumblecore-ish 2024 Spanish rom-com The Other Way Around, about a couple in the film industry who throw a party for their breakup.

Rather than going home to D.C., I am meeting Jess and our Plott Hound–mutt Rhubarb in New York, where we’re staying with our friends for the weekend. I make it through customs with the vacuum-sealed ham and take the subway directly to Trad Room, a Japanese restaurant that’s one of my favorite places in Brooklyn. Everything they do, they do perfectly.

I am now jet-lagged in the opposite direction, but it’s possible I’ve never felt better getting off a plane, walking into the warm, cozy room, sitting down at a table with my wife and friends, and immediately ordering a martini. Mia, Adam, and Tatiana are part of a group of friends in Brooklyn who are somewhat absurdly committed to food; our collective fanaticism has been known to spook significant others. We order a communal meal that I would label surf-turf-sky: sushi platter, steak, and karaage. Also, I demand all three salads on the menu (vegetables!). I get a second martini to balance out the adrenaline of the trip. Dessert is a canoe of frosting-coated cream puffs. The strawberry flavor is better than the matcha; it’s what I imagine candy must taste like to a 3-year-old. We stop at Barb’s for a final beer before collapsing at Mia and Adam’s.

Saturday, February 8
After a dog walk, we all go to brunch at Diner. I’m always nostalgic for Diner from living in Brooklyn through my 20s, but it’s not just a trip down memory lane; the restaurant continues to be on point. (Though I was sad that our waiter didn’t scrawl the menu directly on the table as they usually do.) Our communal order of banana coffee cake and Caesar salad makes for an interesting first course; I like them better separately than together. We also share a massive pancake, and I get the Welsh rarebit on a thick slice of toast topped with a fried egg — very satisfying. I wash it all down with 18 cups of coffee. The jet-lagged breakfast makes me feel the kind of normal where you definitely are not normal, the way the upper-downer balance of an espresso martini is great until it’s too late. Still I charge forward.

The rest of the day is devoted to a cooking project. Mia’s mother has shipped her packages of pickled frozen cabbages to make sarma, traditional Balkan cabbage rolls stuffed with pork, beef, and rice. I pick up a Slovenian orange wine at Bed-Vyne that seems fittingly Eastern European. (Moser 2019 for those keeping track.) Mia makes the filling, and we all help out on the rolls. It’s more forgiving than making dumplings; we stack them up in layers in two pots, which are then studded with chunks of smoked pork belly and pork ribs. We fill the pots with water, and then they simmer for an hour. While the cabbage cooks, Rhubarb frolics around with their dog, June, with whom she shares a pair of Best Friend dog tags, and we feed them slices of smoked sausage.

After an hour, we add a tomato roux to the pot to thicken the broth. Adam decides to make the smaller pot Sichuan flavored, with a mala roux. The apartment fills with a complex but very compelling scent. The end result is magical; the cabbage has softened to a texture that Jess compared to dumpling skin, and the smoked pork makes a deeply flavorful, pungent broth, even with a short cooking time. To me, it tastes like family, a recipe that’s forgiving but specific, something with heritage. This is Mia’s first attempt; she pronounces it a complete success.

Sunday, February 9
I feel like every day this week has been a Super Bowl–scale smorgasbord, but today is the actual Super Bowl. I have to finish writing my column, so Jess and Mia walk the dogs to Nagle’s Bagels and kindly bring back an everything with cream cheese and tomato for me.

Once my draft is done, Jess and I meet our friend Nozlee at Conohen, a cutely informal onigiri countertop that only just started having set hours and a Google Maps listing. We share the vegetable yakisoba and a very tender hamburger patty served with demi-glace sauce and a few peas and carrots, which is, as advertised on the sign, a perfect side to the onigiri. I have a grilled salmon onigiri, which is as big as my fist, with loosely and elegantly packed rice wrapped in seaweed. Such sprezzatura! The week is finally catching up to me, though, and I feel like I’m eating a little too much …

Time to cook for the Super Bowl! People are coming to Mia and Adam’s. The vibe is high-low. Jess has been talking up an idea she had for “winter vegetable nachos,” which will feature radicchio, black beans (donated from our looming domestic pile of excess Rancho Gordo bean-club bags), cheddar, and arugula. Mia wraps hot dog chunks and Chicago sport peppers in puff pastry for pigs in a blanket. Adam makes oven-baked wings, half with buffalo sauce and half with mala spice mix (they’ve been drying out in the fridge overnight with a cornstarch rub to make them crispier). Andrew brings a ranch-jalapeño-pepperoni pizza from La Flor in Crown Heights. Nozlee comes straight from playing a hockey game, but earlier in the day sent over a tote bag full of beers in an Uber courier, to the amusement of the driver.

I was initially skeptical of Jess’s nachos, but they’re delicious, particularly because she charred the radicchio beforehand. Her creation has a farmers’ market, Joshua McFadden quality. The food is more important to me than the football game, as usual, but the game is a good excuse to cook for one another, a small act of collectivity. Maybe I’ll fast next week.