Botín, Madrid

Botín is a restaurant at 17 Cuchilleros Street, beside Madrid’s Plaza Mayor. Its brick façade and wooden entrance belong to a building that the restaurant occupies across four floors. Inside, the setting uses low ceilings, plentiful furnishings and objects from the past, while the cooking follows Castilian traditions.

Its fame rests on a striking age claim. As local legend has it, French cook Jean Botín and his Asturian wife founded it in 1725, and Guinness presents it as the world’s oldest restaurant. The documented history is different: Cándido Remis opened this establishment in 1865 under the name “Pastelería de Cándido Remis, Sobrino de Botín”.

The González family has owned it since the 1930s, and the restaurant remains known for roast suckling pig prepared in its old wood-fired oven. Garlic soup is another signature dish, made with chicken broth, sherry and a poached egg. Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises mentions eating at Botín, although the reference most likely concerns another establishment with the same name in Plaza de Herradores.

Benito Pérez Galdós also wrote about this Cuchilleros restaurant, including its pastries. The story here is not simply great age: it is a real restaurant whose celebrated origin story reaches further back than its documented opening.