Paella Downtown

For those of you looking for a happening date on a Tuesday take a look at Malagra's Tapas and Bar on 2nd Street. This is a unique fun experience that includes food and wine for only $20 a person.

Owner/Chef Alejandro basically starts cooking at 6:00 in the back of the restaurant on a massive skillet. There is space available for 10 people and  reservations are strongly recommended. I called at 11:00am day of and got the last 2 spots. According to the Chef he has over 200 different Paella recipes and cooks a different one each week. For those uninformed Paella is a spanish dish close to a dry jumbalaya. On our date night the main protein was chicken and chorizo. In previous Tuesdays he made lamb, scallops/seafood mixture, vegetarian, ...

With Austin traffic we got there at 6:30 and missed the beginning of the cooking experience. The chef had already got the skillet out and started the mixture. They provide recipes on the tables in case you want to cook it at home. During the cooking time the chef explained what he was doing and told some humorous stories. Very laid back atmosphere. I would describe the decor of Malagra as an upscale wine bar.

Cooking the Paella takes roughly an 1.5 hours so we still had close to an hour to enjoy the show. We chose to snack on some calamari and order a glass of wine. When the meal was finally finished you get a huge bowl of paella and a wine pairing picked by Chef Alejandro.

The Paella came out great. You can always tell a good meal and dinner by when everyone at our table had paid no one left for 30 minutes. The chef ate a bowl at the table with us and shook our hands before heading back to the kitchen.

All in all I thought it was a rather successful date night. I had originally planned on following it up with going to Central Market for some hot chocolate and looking at Christmas lights on 38th street, but the weather got cold plus Jen had recorded a movie a couple days earlier.