Chunks of fried potato with a hot, pimentón-red sauce — the bar tapa found all over Spain.
What makes it patatas bravas
Potatoes cut irregularly and fried twice.
A sauce with pimentón and some heat.
Served hot, with toothpicks, at the bar.
Where it comes from
Several Madrid bars claim to have invented them, around the middle of the twentieth century, and none can quite prove it. The idea is simple: potatoes, fried until crisp, with a 'brave' sauce that has some bite.
The sauce is where it differs. In Madrid it's often a roux of oil, flour and pimentón thinned with stock, with no tomato; elsewhere it's tomato-based, and in Catalonia alioli goes on as well.