10/31/2019 José Andrés’s Exuberant Spanish Food Hall at Hudson Yards | The New Yorker

Goings on
…
Tables forAbout Town
Two June 10 & 17, 2019 Issue

José Andrés’sExplore
Exuberant Spanish
Food Hall at Hudson Yards
The humanitarian chef ’s Mercado Little Spain brings a maze of regional
specialties, from Galician empanadas to Valencian paella, to New York City.

By Shauna Lyon May 31, 2019

celebrity chef and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee aren’t usually the
A same person. But the cheerful Spanish-born José Andrés, who
cooked at elBulli, Ferran Adrià’s Catalonian bastion of avant-garde
cuisine, before moving, in 1993, to D.C., where he laid the groundwork,
with Jaleo, for an empire (he now has more than thirty restaurants), is
the exception. He has a penchant for turning up in disaster zones to
distribute thousands—and, in post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico,
millions—of free hot meals. And that’s not to mention Andrés’s pro-
immigration activism—an immigrant to the U.S. himself, he recently
fed thousands of migrants in Tijuana, to call attention to the status of
refugees in Mexico. So how does one reconcile this world-class
humanitarianism with a venture in Hudson Yards, the oft-reviled
multibillion-dollar complex of luxury offices, apartments, shops,
restaurants, and a staircase to nowhere, in lower midtown? It’s actually
easy, because Andrés’s market there, which he opened in March with
the brothers Ferran and Albert Adrià, is an exuberant labor of love.

One of the stand-alone restaurants within Mercado Little Spain is Mar, where the menu
includes the requisite gambas al ajillo, large head-on shrimp with fried garlic slivers.
Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

Mercado Little Spain, a sort of Spanish Eataly, stands apart from other
new dining establishments at Hudson Yards (including concepts from
Thomas Keller and David Chang) with, rst of all, its ground-level
entrance. (The others are deeply ensconced in the mall, past stores like

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10/31/2019 José Andrés’s Exuberant Spanish Food Hall at Hudson Yards | The New Yorker

Fendi and Patek Philippe, up many escalators.)

Goings on On entry, you are
…
greeted by a riot of color and About Town
a buzzing maze of fteen kiosks, modelled
on the bazaars of Spain, offering different regional specialties.
Explore

There’s Tortilla de Patatas, where the classic Spanish omelette oozes a

near-liquid center of caramelized onion and soft potato. Bocatas &
Empanadas hawks “bikinis,” a great name for a hot ham-and-cheese
sandwich. The empanadas are not the Hot Pocket variety but a Galician
style, sliced from a full rectangle of burnished puff pastry encasing
llings like a delicious sweet-savory pork.

A highlight is the humblest of dishes, pan con tomate, for which long, narrow sheaths of
bread—pan de cristal, own in from Spain—and toasted, rubbed with garlic and tomato
pulp, and topped with olive oil and extra-large akes of salt.
Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

At the paella counter, you can choose between Valenciana, with chicken
and rabbit, and Verdura, with green beans and artichokes. There’s also a
show, as cooks prepare vast quantities of the rice dish in giant shallow
steel pans over a wood re. A highlight is the humblest of dishes, pan
con tomate. Long, narrow sheaths of bread—pan de cristal, own in from
Spain—are split lengthwise, toasted, rubbed with garlic and tomato
pulp, and topped with olive oil and extra-large akes of salt. If you eat it
right away, taking advantage of its peak warm, crunchy, salty
unctuousness, you won’t even wish it were pizza—which is good,
because there’s no pizza here. Instead, there are cocas, which look like
pizza but aren’t, as cheeky murals on the wall insist.

The menu at Leña, whose focus is wood- red meats, includes an ibérico de bellota tasting
that is crowned with shards of crispy pigskin. Pre-butchered cuts are sold by the pound for
cooking at home.
Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

Even if your intentions are chaste—a nice clean glass of gazpacho, a few
croquetas—it’s easy to slide into debauchery. You can also do this the
old-fashioned way, at any of three restaurants. Tucked into the corners
of the space are the casual Spanish Diner; Leña, whose focus is wood-
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10/31/2019 José Andrés’s Exuberant Spanish Food Hall at Hudson Yards | The New Yorker

red meats, including an ibéricoGoings

de bellota
ontasting, in which the famous
…
About Town
ham made from the meat of acorn-fed pigs is crowned with crispy
shards of skin; and Mar, a savvyExplore
showcase for seafood. Mar’s requisite
gambas al ajillo, large head-on shrimp with fried garlic slivers, can
advisedly be accompanied by chunks of red snapper marinated in
vinegar and a pimenton-heavy Canary Islands spice mixture, a forest of
fat white asparagus blanketed in mayonnaise, and a rich squid-ink rice,
salty like the ocean. Those who still regret never taking that trip to
elBulli (it closed in 2011) can nd comfort in liquid olives, or in the
resurrected Gambas al Estilo de elBulli 1996, a plate of translucent
shaved shrimp topped with the expressed juices of the heads.

On entry, you are greeted by a riot of color and a buzzing maze of fteen kiosks, modelled
on the bazaars of Spain, offering different regional specialties.
Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

Andrés remains a policy wonk in chef ’s clothing. On the “Today” show

recently, he gave a paella demonstration while touting the organization
Wellness in the Schools, which brings healthy local ingredients to
public-school lunches. On “60 Minutes,” he told a skeptical Anderson
Cooper that vegetables are better than meat and “unbelievably sexy.”
Give this man a prize, or at least try his jamón. (Kiosk dishes
$2.50-$21.) ♦

June 10
Published in the print edition of the June 10 &
& 17,
17, 2019
2019, issue, with the
headline “Mercado Little Spain.”

Shauna Lyon is the editor of Goings On About Town. Read more »

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