Food: Creative traditional cuisine
Address: Calle Goya 5 (Platea Madrid), 28001 Madrid, Spain
Phone Number: +34 91 219 23 05
Website: http://www.restaurantearriba.com/en/
Guide Michelin: Bib Gourmand
Visited: September 24, 2016

Platea Madrid opened its door in June 2014 and is as unique as it gets (at least at a first glance…). Envision an old movie theater turned into in an 1950s cinema style gourmet market, containing six floor of restaurants, tapas bars, vegetable shops, cake shops, cheese booths, cocktail bars and DJs playing in the evening. It also happened to have one of its entrances about five meters from our Hotel…

With all those options it isn’t easy to pick one place, but Platea is not place where you just visit one place… That being said, we started our evening at Arriba, where we had a reservation.

Arriba is the name of Chef Ramón Freixa‘s bistro restaurant located on the first floor of Platea. Here you have a nice view of the main stage but all the entire premises. I have previously eaten at Ramón Freixa‘s 2-star (Guide Michelin) restaurant, bearing his name, which by the way, is located just around the corner from Platea (in the Salamanca district)

Ramón Freixa describes the food at Arriba as:

“Arriba is the prêt-à-porter line of my cuisine, a restaurant concept where tradition and avant-garde collide. It’s a place where madness and sanity coexist, a place for sharing, a place where you’ll find legacy dishes… in short, a place to enjoy and be happy. Arriba is the kind of restaurant I’d head for every day without a second thought.”

Since we had visited some tapas bars during the day, we weren’t that hungry and ordered just a burger and a sallad.

Sallad

After the dinner finished, we moved up one floor to have some drinks. Those drinks were really creative and tasty and you had a good view of the premises from the cocktail bar.

Drinks ordered at the top floor of Platea

In summary:

I have mixed feelings about Platea. Sure, its a nice place, but I think it lacks soul. It feels like a place where some interior designers have tried a little bit too much… It also seems that Platea is mostly occupied by tourists.

On the topic of the food served at Arriba, I wasn’t that pleased either and could not really understand that it is a “Bib Gourmand” place.