Ludeña

I came here to grab lunch on my visit to Toledo. We sat at the bar. The tapas here are more like an entre. If you order a drink you get a small piece of ham with bread.
Food:
Mushroom, came with scrambled eggs, ham, and shrimp. This was a big dish despite being on the appetizers list. This dish was not good. It was too greasy with a lot of oil.
Prawns — shrimp with shell and lemon slice. This was better than the Mushroom.
This place is okay. I may have been spoiled by tapas in serville and Malaga.

Bar menu has English on the back. We ordered the special, garlic mushrooms, and fried chorizo. Everything was super good. I’d definitely come back to try more food.

Good meal while in Toledo, small plates lots of good Spanish food. good place to grab a drink. Staff was friendly.

Very tasty traditional carcamusa. The pork is tender and the sauce flavorful. Our airbnb host recommended it, glad she did!

A very typical tapas bar where you can stand at the counter and eat tapas and drink inexpensive vino de la casa. Although there is also a restaurant, we love to eat at the counter and talk to the bartender (in Splanglish :-(). There is a very large menu, but we were advised by our landlord to order their traditional dish called Carcamusa, which is a delicious stew of pork with a tomato based gravy. My Spanish mother-​in-​law used to make this for me all the time and she used to tell me it was a dish that was very simple and easy to make. I loved the way it was prepared by my mother-​in-​law and also at Ludena! It was so hearty and served with a loaf of crusty bread, that we were full and could not order anything else! We will have to try the perdiz, and the codorniz tomorrow.

La tan notoriada cancamusa es una bazofia de carne, mal cocida, con tomate frito de lata, impropia para paladares normales.

El 5 de octubre estuvimos comiendo en este restaurante, nos lo recomendaron en el hotel. Comimos de menu, 12,50 €, los platos para el precio estaban bastante bien, servicio rapido y bien atendidos. Para a quien le guste los platos fuertes que no deje de pedir sopa castellana, como dijo el camarero «contundente».

He venido por las recomendaciones de Unilocal.
El sitio esta chulo, una antigua tasca con terraza. Hasta los topes los findes.
La carcamusa solo la he probado aquí. Carne con tomate de bote y guisantes. Bastante decepcionado. No saben tirar cañas.

Me lo recomendaron varias personas y no me decepcionó. Es un lugar de aires tradicionales, con muy buena comida a un precio muy interesante. Hay que probar la carcamusa, que, según me explicaron, es la tapa típica de Toledo.

Recomendamos la carcamusa y las croquetas. Éramos dos y pedimos, además de eso, un chorizo frito y calamares a la romana. Fue un error por la cantidad, la carcamusa llena mucho.
Los calamares no merecían mucho la pena, nos lo podríamos haber ahorrado. Para dos persona dos platos en este lugar son suficientes.

Fantastic! Great service, authentic Spanish dishes and a wonderful atmosphere. Perfect for a lunch break during your El Greco pilgrimage!

Bar con solera en el centro de Toledo!!!
No puedes venir a Toledo y no pasarte por este local a probar uno de los platos típicos de la zona y que encima se ideó en este local que ha pasado varias generaciones.
La decoración es bastante peculiar pero acogedora y, si el tiempo lo permite, cenar o comer en la terraza es una delicia.
Además de los escamursos, que son los mejores y los originales de la zona, también sus croquetas te alegrarán el paladar.
Es un local recomendable 100%, pero como su fama los precede, se llena, así que hay que ir con paciencia chic@s!!!
Merece la pena la espera, ya lo veréis!!!

Just a review on the dining experience and one dish.
Service was fast and brisk, I ordered the house speciality which was the pork in a stew type. It was quite overly salty, and I like salty tastes, and the meat wasn’t tender at all.
I am a big fan of traditional simple dishes but this was a little bit of a let down. I am sure the bar experience and being outdoors is nice and along with the decent service it is holding me back from giving this a two.
However maybe I just had a bad batch, it tasted like it was prepared many a couple of days ago and was being reheated for the weekend crowd in which yes there was many as it was a full house on Saturday. Other dishes looked nice so maybe it was just my luck.

Este bar me ha encantado. Los carcamusos (plato inventado aquí) está de muerte, y las croquetas impresionantes. El servicio de lo más amable. Él mismo nos ha recomendado que no pidiéramos más de 2 raciones porque eran grandes.
Además el baño muy limpio y con jabón y toallitas para secarse (algo últimamente difícil de encontrar)

A tiny place on a street corner all the way in the center of the old Toledo city within the city walls. It has a small bar area where you should be sitting if you want to enjoy cheap drinks with free tapas or opt for the small outside patio, either way it’s tight and crammed with limited seating. They only take cash, so be prepared. This is a local spot as all the locals would claim. Not many tourists know about it nor do they seem to care to promote it to the tourists. We certainly got looks when we were there for dinner, but the server was nice enough to try to explain their specialty dishes and recommendations to us. We started at the bar then waited for the outside table, in hindsight we would’ve just stayed at the bar because they charged extra per dish (3 – 5 Euros more) for sitting outside. The server never mentioned this to us when we asked to sit outside. I guess this is why we kept being told not to tip when dining in Spain, they built in the service fee into the prices per dish. Plus everyone smokes outside. In general, if you are bothered by smoke, choose to sit inside restaurants and bars everywhere in Spain.
Almost everyone at the bar and outside patio orders their famous local dish called ‘Carcamusa’:
, a traditional Toledo tapas dish. It’s like a red meat sauce stew dish filled with pork, peas, carrots and onions. I’ve seen other dishes like the Spanish potato omelette that looks like a quiche that is crossed over with mac and cheese (called ‘Tortillas’ in Spain, not to be confused with the typical flour or corn tortilla sheets we eat in the US), drenched in this same sauce served to bar patrons in this establishment. We had the Carcamusa at another restaurant for lunch and agreed that Ludeña does it better.

Un bar muy pequeñito con una terraza muy tranquila en una plaza cerrada y sin tráfico, y cuya única pega es que le sobran unas cuantas avispas en esta temporada estival que te dan algo la lata.
Como habíamos comido como animales pero queríamos cenar un poco, elegimos picar una ración de queso manchego con aceite (estupendo) y un plato de carcamusas, típico de este local y consistente en un guiso de vacuno con hortalizas y un ligero toque picante que me supo a gloria, suficiente como para ponerme a mojar en la salsa y no saber o poder o querer parar.
De precio bastante bien para ser un lugar tan famosete, y de hecho hubiéramos repetido si yo no me hubiera empeñado en cambiar de sitio para comer al día siguiente.

We had our best meal so far on this trip. We recommend the house special, setas mushrooms and gazpacho. Well priced, good portions and very enjoyable.

Es un bar con un pequeño comedor, y una terracita para los días calurosos, que lleva en Toledo muchísimos años. Tienen un menú por 14,50.-euros (a fecha 2012), y su especialidad son las carcamusas. De las mejores que he probado. No te quedas con hambre. Lo que menos elaborado son los postres, que si bien son caseros, no son lo más de lo más.
Aún así le pongo la máxima puntuación porque se come estupendamente. No reservan porque el comedor es muy pequeño, así que si quieres comer dentro deberás ir bien prontito, ya que de lo contrario no tendrás mesa.
Muy buena relación calidad-​precio. SIn duda lo recomiendo. Insisto en las carcamusas, aunque tienen otros platos muy pero que muy buenos.

The best Spanish restaurant in Toledo. Well maybe not the best but I’m from Toledo myself so I’m going to have high standards, but tapas are really good and free when you have drinks. Prices are good too so if you come to visit the town where I was born come by this restaurant /​bar

A fine bar with good prices! Typical of your bars in this area! But hey its cheap, and if you drink enough they give you lots of free tapas.

One day, I decided to explore Toledo, which is an old historical city in Castilla La Mancha and 30 minutes by train from Madrid. One of the fun parts of visiting the old city of Toledo is getting lost and just exploring the small streets. While I walked through the streets, I stumbled upon this place. I wanted to eat some lunch, and decided to walk in. I had no idea what I wanted to get but I saw a few people eating a dish that I was not familiar with. I then asked the server in Spanish:
«¿Que es esto?» (What is it?)
He answered my question. I had no idea exactly what he said, but I think he said «tortilla». I think he was implying «tortilla de patatas», which is known in English as the Spanish omelette. This is a thick egg omelette with potatoes. A dark-​skinned man and his family were eating this dish, saying something happily to me in Spanish, and motioned their hands, implying that I should eat this dish. They looked like they were tourists from Central or South America.
I then pointed to the Spanish omelette and said, «Quiero, por favor.» (I want, please)
I would eventually eat some more Spanish omelettes when I came back to the USA, but this Spanish omelette was different. What makes this dish different was that it was doused with a reddish sauce with some sort of meat and peas. It was a tasty and filling dish. I was given half of a baguette as well, and it was crispy on the outside, and chewy on the inside. It also tasted really good with that sauce on the Spanish omelette. After eating that dish, I was fairly full, and had plenty of energy for the rest of the afternoon. It was also fairly inexpensive, as I spent less than € 5 on this dish and a glass bottle of Coke. What made this place memorable to me was that this was the first time I actually ate a Spanish omelette.
Overall, I think this is a decent choice to get tapas, particularly a Spanish omelette in the old and charming city of Toledo.
When I left, the dark-​skinned man and his family and asked me a question in Spanish. I think he asked me if I liked the dish. I just said,
«Sí, muy bien, gracias.» (Yes, really good, thanks)
He smiled and we parted. From that experience, I learned about one of the most popular dishes in Spain and at the same time, it was one of the many occasions I had to speak a language I have never studied, but slowly starting to learn.