Fish bowl dessert at El Club Allard (Brad A. Johnson)

There’s an enormous security guard stationed outside the entrance of Madrid’s El Club Allard. The dude looks incredibly menacing at first. But then he smiles, and his face appears more jolly than scary. He waves me past the gate and up a flight of well-worn marble stairs—lit with bare lightbulbs—into a 1908 mansion that now serves as one of the most glamorous restaurants in all of Spain—chandeliers, high ceilings, silk drapes and a series of intimate dining rooms, some with the doors closed so as not to reveal who’s inside. Sexy black-and-white photographs lend the otherwise classic interior a modernist edge, a sense of contemporary relevance. Continue reading →