A restaurant in Madrid known for its egg tortillas has temporarily closed after a salmonella outbreak – triggering a debate over how the iconic Spanish dish should be cooked and how runny it should be.
The dish typically contains a mixture of fried potato and egg, often with onion, and is one of Spain’s most widely eaten foods.
Casa Dani is known for only lightly cooking the eggs, serving a particularly runny version.It closed temporarily after at least 59 people complained of food poisoning, having eaten tortilla there last week.Six have been hospitalised, according to the Madrid region’s health department.
Casa Dani says it is co-operating with the local health authorities to ensure its kitchens are salmonella-free and can open again soon.
It has won a number of prizes, including the 2019 Spanish potato tortilla championship, and featured in the Netflix foodie series Somebody Feed Phil. It serves around 100,000 tortillas each year.
The case has put under scrutiny how restaurants prepare this dish and the regulations governing the cooking of eggs.
For the last three decades, government guidelines have meant that eggs served to the public either have to be pasteurised or, if fresh, cooked through at a temperature of at least 75C.
In December 2022, a government decree slightly loosened those rules, stating that fresh eggs should be cooked through at “70C or more for two seconds” or “at a temperature of 63C for 20 seconds”.
These temperatures are important: egg white sets at around 62-65C and egg yolk at 65-70C.
“We put a thermometer into the tortilla, and we leave it cooking at 70 degrees for about two minutes and that kills all the bacteria,” says Alfredo García, owner of Sylkar restaurant in Madrid, which specialises in the dish. “At 70 degrees it’s still runny.” (BBC)