Traditional Madrid fare is hearty stuff, aimed mainly at combating the cold winters. Eating is a social activity, whether that means eating out late at night or having large family gatherings for lunch. If you're just having tapas you'll never be short of high-calorie, high-cholesterol items like tortilla (omelet), callos (tripe), and chorizo (spicy sausage), and if it's a main meal traditional favorites like cocido (a dry stew of lamb, chickpeas, and veal generously strewn with chunks of lard), lechona (roast suckling pig), which reaches its apex of fatty sublimity in nearby Segovia, pierna de cordero (leg of lamb), and chuletones (huge cutlets of beef from the nearby Castilian stronghold of Avila) still dominate. The portions are immense, but the prices, by North American standards, can be high.