Madrid is a global cosmopolitan city with a diverse food scene to match, but the city retains a love of traditional eateries of the type lost to time in many cities. The influx of immigrants from Spain’s provinces to the capital has brought the best of Spanish regional cuisine to Madrid. This wealth means that there are excellent restaurants serving traditional Castillian, Basque, Galician, and other specialties right in the heart of the city. From the delicate Navarran vegetables on offer at García de la Navarra to the ancestral roast lamb of Botín, Madrid is a city where you can find heritage recipes and old-school service in the 21st century.
Restaurante Vinoteca García de la Navarra
The unexpected secret of Vinoteca García de la Navarra is that they posess one of the best wine cellars in the heart of Madrid. The García de la Navarra brothers who own and run Vinoteca García de la Navarra restaurant are Pedro in the kitchen and Luis behind the wine. Luis developed a passion for wine while working at some of Madrid’s iconic classic restaurants, and today he maintains one of the best cellars in the city. Close to a thousand different wines rest in a temperature-controlled cellar, ready to be enjoyed. The great wines and wineries of Spain are well represented, from the classic houses of Rioja and Ribera del Duero to the new stars of regions like Priorat and Bierzo. There is, as there ought to be, a selection of the finest wines of France and other world wine regions, including some of the most sought-after wines in the world. As if that were not enough, the Vinoteca has an impressive collection of old vintages. This is one of the few restaurants in Madrid where you can access verticals of wines from iconic producers such as Vega Sicilia, Pingus, La Rioja Alta and Viña Tondonia. Even more exciting, Luis has collected old vintages of wines from less heralded producers, allowing you to taste aged wines from small growers, wines that usually prove difficult to find on the market. These factors, plus the warm and highly professional wine service, have helped make García de la Navarra a hangout for Madrid’s wine world.
What would this wine collection be without great food to accompany it. Vinoteca García de la Navarra, in the quiet upscale Retiro neighborhood next to Madrid’s iconic Retiro Park, is one of the city’s great traditional restaurants. Step through the door of the unassuming entrance and you’re in a small dining room, elegant and warm, with a bar on one side and a tempting wine cellar behind glass. The staff are beyond welcoming, including Luis García de la Navarra himself who is your ideal wine advisor.
The menu here focuses on seasonal products and classic Spanish recipes. The vegetables from Navarra in northern Spain are a specialty. The appetizers–croquetas and Russian potato salad–the traditional Spanish stews, the fresh fish and meat from around Spain make up classic menus across Madrid, and indeed across much of Spain. Here the brothers focus on sourcing the best ingredients and, unusually for central Spain, the best vegetables from the north: asparagus, spring peas, thistle, artichokes. This is a place for feasting. The best strategy is to order as many plates as you can and share everything around the table. Vinoteca García de la Navarra will make you feel at home, and you may never want to leave.
Botín
This arch-traditional restaurant just off Madrid’s Plaza Mayor has a good claim to being not just the oldest restaurant in Madrid but in the whole world, having served diners since at least 1725. Its dining rooms, decorated in the austere Castilian style, have hosted luminaries of arts and politics from around the world. The specialty here is the best of Castilian cuisine, with special emphasis on suckling pig (cochinillo) and baby lamb roasted in a wood-fired oven. The delicious meat comes out so tender it can be cut with a dinner plate! The best dishes in the Spanish repertoire, Botín’s cozy dining rooms and attentive classic service make this restaurant a must in Madrid.
Restaurante Rafa
Madrid’s revitalized central district of Ibiza, adjoining the Retiro Park, is home to creative restaurants and tapas bars frequented by residents of the nearby Salamanca neighborhood, known for high-end everything. Amidst this mix of well heeled patrons and madrileños seeking creative bites we find one of Madrid’s forever restaurants. Predating the fashionable tapas bars and restaurants of the area, Restaurante Rafa has stood firm since the 1960s. Today an icon, it began as a humble tavern opened by two brothers from Guadalajara. The family later converted the tavern into a marisquería, a classic Spanish seafood restaurant, because they wanted to serve quality Spanish seafood to their loyal customers. Today it’s one of the city’s most respected seafood spots, drawing lovers of good meals and chefs day after day.
Step through Rafa’s nondescript door and you’re in a cozy, inviting bar area. A regular might stop here for a drink, some tapas and shellfish, and a warm conversation with the staff (often including the owner). You can stay in the bar all day, eating comfortably close to the ice bucket full of wine bottles, but for a proper seafood feast you’ll want to settle into the dining room. Veteran waiters in white jackets will help you get rolling. Some sparkling wine to start, or a bottle of white. The menu is classic Spanish with a seafood focus. You might start with Rafa's famous ensaladilla with tuna (said to be the best in the city), creamy croquetas, or salpicón de bogavante (lobster cocktail). Then it’s time for the real fun to begin: plates of shellfish such as prawns, shrimp, clams, lobster, crab, and oysters. The selection varies with the market but the quality does not. Each creature is cooked to perfection and full of flavor. A happy situation, all around.
Some reasonable people might stop at the shellfish, but this is Spain. Next you can continue with the fish. The highly appreciated wild fish of Spain’s northern coast like turbot and sea bream are big draws, but classic Spanish dishes of cod or hake’s cheeks are also consistently excellent. Of course, there’s rarely such a thing as a pure seafood restaurant in Spain, where nobody told them that you needn’t have shellfish and fish and meat! So Rafa has a very strong selection of meat dishes, from steak to wild game to rich, warming stews of the sort that Madrileños adore. This is the kind of restaurant where classics shine, where Spaniards come to see what the Platonic ideal of a dish tastes like.
Rafa is one of the constellation of truly classic Spanish restaurants, unrelentingly traditional and stubbornly excellent. In a global city with an intensely dynamic food scene, these institutions aren’t as common as they once were, but the great ones persist because they are beloved and in some ways more respected than any creative restaurant. May they remain for another century.
Casa Benigna
There are plenty of spots in Madrid to eat paella, but Casa Benigna stands above the rest. Alicante native Norberto Jorge’s cozy rice temple lies out of the city’s center, drawing diners to its tables from near and far. Norberto led haute cuisine restaurants in Norway and Spain for years, even earning his home region of Alicante its first Michelin star, before settling in Madrid and returning to his culinary roots. With his mother as gastronomic inspiration, he’s brought the best traditional rices of the Valencian coast to Madrid for over 30 years at Casa Benigna. It’s a place that makes you feel like you’ve been invited into the Jorge family home, with walls decorated with photos, books and plenty of paella pans. The food served here, however, is world class.
The menu is short and to the point: appetizers and paellas. There's little doubt what the main event will be. Start with impeccably prepared starters, highlights of which include the artisan smoked salmon and the legendary baked eggplant with confit duck. Paella and its relatives are the only mains. There are various versions of the rices, all cooked in the authentic Valencian way in Norberto’s patented patella pans which maximize the layer of precious crispy socorrat rice on the bottom. You might go for the classics: chicken and vegetable paella or rabbit and snail paella, the two most authentic versions of paella originating in the Valencian countryside, or opt for one of the beautiful seafood rices. You can even try fideuá, a dish made like paella but with thin noodles instead of rice. Choose a single rice or a few different ones, and discover how these deceptively simple preparations became one of Spain’s great meals.
Norberto is a wine enthusiast with his own views on wine and pairing. He’s built a short wine list filled with wines that fit his criteria: approachable yet transcendental. Classic bottles from Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Champagne and Cava sit alongside special bottles from Madrid, Bierzo, Priorat and beyond. The wines bring the table to life, as they should. Maybe it’s the people serving them that make the difference, because Casa Benigna feels like you’re part of the family.