HUNGRY GERALD

Why does looking at great art make me so hungry? In Madrid, there’s a great art walk along Paseo del Prado. There’s El Prado, of course, with scores of master works by Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. The Reina Sofia has Picasso’s Guernica and outstanding examples of Italian Futurism.The Thyssen-Bornemisza has good examples of everything from Rembrandt to Braque. Now there’s a new place along the Paseo, the Caixa Forum. Completed after my last visit, this former power house renovated by the Swiss Team of Herzog and De Meuron (the duo who did the Tate Modern) features one of the world’s largest vertical gardens, a spectacular staircase and a collection of contemporaries. Enough to give HG a raging appetite.  During his last visit these museums forced HG to eat sumptuous amounts of pulpo al gallego (tender chunks of stewed octopus in a smoked paprika sauce) and pimientos del padron (lauded in a previous post).  In Paris,  after a good helping of Legers and Picassos at Centre Pompidou and Degas at Gare d’Orsay,  HG’s cry is:”Shuck those oysters!! Sizzle that duck confit!!  And, please,  encore those pommes frites.”