La Pecera - Taiyaki comes to Madrid

Having seen long lines outside this new ice cream place I was intrigued. It’s called La Pecera and at the Calle Fuencarral end of Calle Valerde (Near the Carrefour Bio)

Japanese ice cream they said, in a unique fish-shaped edible cup (called a Taiyaki)

Looks very instagrammable I thought, is It any good though?

I had to wait a few weeks for the opportunity to go visit, a time when I was out of the house in the evening after dinner on a weeknight with a craving for dessert.  

We had been to Tierra at Quevedo on a Tuesday for a 2 for 1 offer (they had recently opened there) and, not content with being full of delicious Burritos, decided the Japanese place was going to get a visit if there wasn’t a big queue.

We were in luck.

No one there! Bingo! There weren’t even any staff to greet us when we arrived either though! Moments later after calling out “Hola?” a face emerged from the “kitchen”.

“Sigues abierto?” Are you still open?  They were.

First step was to decide whether we wanted a Taiyaki or not, they had regular cups and cones too.

Taiyakis came in vanilla or chocolate flavor. We decided on Vanilla.

At this point I had asked if they had any lactose free options as I can’t eat a lot of ice cream without getting a bit ill. They didn’t :(

Just one for my other half then.

Choose from 6 flavours:-

Vanilla,

Chocolate Dark

Salty Caramel

Matcha Latte (Green tea with milk)

Choco-caramel Mix

Vanilla-Matcha mix

Clearly here the attraction is the matcha ice cream, all the rage for the countless spanish who have visited japan as is the recent fashion and have developed a taste for it.

My other half isn’t a fan though, so we chose Dark chocolate. We had toppings of speculos (that famous caramelized biscuit you get with your coffee in some places) and salty caramel sauce.

All this for 4,50.  It’s whippy ice cream from the machine as opposed to the stuff you scoop in.

Looks good though! That'll go on instagram!

This bad boy is a real tricky thing to eat though!

Try eating it without the sauce or ice cream melting and dripping all over you, and then, when you get down to the taiyaki itself, trying to bite it results in the remaining ice cream getting squeezed out and making a further mess all over your hands and clothes if you’re not careful.  You have to squeeze and suck really, then bite or you’ll end up having to put your clothes in the wash!

How does it taste?

Well after all those steps I have to admit, it doesn’t taste bad at all, good quality ice cream and the Taiyaki, which is basically a moulded Belgian waffle tasting thing, was also not bad. Tasting very similar to a waffle I had at crepes and waffles further up on fuencarral. With the regular flavours, you’re not experiencing anything that you haven’t tasted before or is better than anything else. The combination is a good one and the price isn’t bad. If you’re an ice cream purist though you’ll probably prefer some other places. If you like matcha ice cream, then this is probably the place for you!