Madrid tabernas trading for more than a century

Every house here has been pouring in the same premises since before 1920, several since the reign of Isabel II, and most still turn out the dish that made them: cocido, callos, bacalao fritters eaten standing up. Zinc counters, tiled dados and hand-painted facades survive because the licence and the family stayed put, not because a designer was hired to fake them. Grouped by continuous trade at one address rather than by founding date alone, so relocations and revivals under an old name are left out.

Places in this collection

  • Los Galayos — Inaugurated in 1894 on Calle Botoneras, with tables spilling onto the Plaza Mayor arcade, and Castilian cooking as the fixed brief: roast m…
  • Restaurante La Bola — Trading since 1870 on the narrow Calle de la Bola near Ópera, with a founding date some sources push back to 1868. The cocido is cooked the…
  • Cervecería Alemana — On Plaza de Santa Ana since 1904, in the Barrio de las Letras, and one of the three houses admitted most recently to the city's centenary a…
  • Bodega de la Ardosa — Founded in 1892 by a Toledo wine merchant who built a network of Madrid tabernas to sell his own barrels, and one source suspects the site…
  • La Casa del Abuelo — The youngest of the centenary group, dating from 1906 on the bullfighting Calle de la Victoria. It is a one-idea bar in the best sense: pra…
  • Café Gijón — Opened on Paseo de Recoletos in 1888 by a man from Gijón, and for more than a century the standing address for Madrid's literary tertulias:…
  • Casa Ciriaco — It began in 1887 as a wine shop on Calle Mayor and took its present name from Ciriaco Muñoz Sanz, who with his brother Pablo turned it into…
  • Malacatín — A cocido house from 1895, a minute from the Rastro on Calle de la Ruda, with tiled walls and a wall of bullfight posters. The stew is the w…
  • Casa Labra — Founded by an Asturian in 1860 a few steps off Puerta del Sol, and the room where Pablo Iglesias and his circle founded the PSOE in 1879. T…
  • Lhardy — Open since 1839, the house that brought high French cooking to Madrid and kept the belle-époque fittings that came with it. The consommé, t…
  • Taberna Antonio Sánchez — Usually called the oldest tavern in Madrid, with 1787 the date on its own sign and 1839 the year one account gives for its founding by the…
  • Casa Alberto — Opened in 1827 in the Huertas building where Cervantes wrote the Viaje del Parnaso, and still working from a zinc bar with vermouth on tap.…
  • Restaurante Casa Pedro — A staging post on the road north out of Madrid, in what was then the separate village of Fuencarral. The house dates its origins to 1702, t…
  • Posada de la Villa — Founded in 1642 on Cava Baja as the first inn of its kind in Madrid, built to feed travellers, pilgrims and merchants arriving at the Court…

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