# Madrid > Madrid field index from the Places, Kept cultural atlas. - Canonical HTML: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid - Markdown: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid.md - Destination type: city - Location: Spain - Publication state: index ## Places to know ### Yoka Loka *Restaurant | Mercado de Antón Martín · Calle de Santa Isabel 5* - Canonical place ID: madrid--yoka-loka - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--yoka-loka - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Yoka Loka is a tiny, noisy bar buried inside the Mercado de Antón Martín, with sake, chu-hi, shelves of little ochoko to choose from and, sometimes, someone deciding you should be wearing a kimono. It feels like a party, but the nigiri and rolls are the real reason to come. The sushi is genuinely at the level you expect to eat in Japan, served from this little market bar. Yoka Kamada is usually around, moving between tables, talking to everyone and making friends as she goes. The place is normally rammed and the service has the loose, slightly chaotic fun of a proper izakaya. Yoka Loka started in a ridiculous two-square-metre stall and, as it got busier, just kept swallowing more of the market. ### Noi *Restaurant | Recoletos · Calle de Recoletos 6* - Canonical place ID: madrid--noi - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--noi - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current NOI is the Italian restaurant in Madrid that actually bothers to be sexy. Low light, red and green, velvet, terrazzo, mirrors, and an open kitchen right in the middle of it. NOI knows exactly what it wants to be. Gianni Pinto’s food is just as dressed up. Familiar Italian dishes, pushed much further than usual. The spaghetti alla pummarola is a favorite: fresh tomato sauce, basil pesto, properly worked over. But this is not one of those restaurants where ordering the wrong thing ruins the evening. Get whatever sounds good. It probably is. ### Taberna del Olivo *Restaurant | Goya · Calle de José Ortega y Gasset 98* - Canonical place ID: madrid--taberna-del-olivo - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--taberna-del-olivo - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Taberna del Olivo has been on Ortega y Gasset for more than thirty years making rice, and they are fucking good at it. The place is tiny and the menu just keeps throwing rice at you: a banda, negro, señoret, bogavante, carabineros, conejo con caracoles, arroz al horno, melosos, fideuàs. Rice in every direction. There is something very Spanish, and very cool, about a restaurant being this completely itself for this long. It is exactly what you picture when you think of an arrocería. Get the arroz con bogavante. ### El Barril de Goya *Restaurant | Goya · Calle de Goya 86* - Canonical place ID: madrid--el-barril-de-goya - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--el-barril-de-goya - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current There are several El Barriles in Madrid. Go to Goya 86 and ignore the others. The food here is the best by far, and this is the one that still feels like El Barril. The bar is half the point. You can stop for a freezing Albariño, jamón and a plate of cigalas, or sit down for lunch for three hours. Croquetas, gambas, almejas, zamburiñas, carabineros, chipirones, whatever seafood looks best that day. The arroz caldoso is excellent. The seafood is right there on ice at the bar. Madrid is hundreds of kilometres from the sea and is still one of the great cities for eating shellfish. Very good seafood, very good jamón, very cold white wine. Come for a snack, come for dinner, come back next visit. ### Filandón *Restaurant | El Pardo edge · Carretera M-612, km 1.9* - Canonical place ID: madrid--filandon - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--filandon - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Filandón is on the outskirts of Madrid, in a large country house surrounded by gardens and terraces. Reserve an afternoon for this. Sit outside if you can; the garden is the nicest way to experience it, although the dining rooms are beautiful and worth walking through before you leave. It is very posh Madrid, families, business lunches, couples, huge tables, but it is also fun, and the service is excellent. The family behind Pescaderías Coruñesas owns it, which explains the fish, but do not think of Filandón only as a seafood restaurant. The kitchen is good across the whole menu. Always get the almejas de Carril a la sartén, then order from the grill: fish, meat, whatever looks good. Pay attention to the vegetables too. They are unusually good here, and some come from the family’s own farm in El Bierzo. It is worth the trip. ### El 5 de Tirso *Restaurant | Tirso de Molina · Plaza de Tirso de Molina 5* - Canonical place ID: madrid--el-5-de-tirso - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--el-5-de-tirso - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Tirso de Molina is one of those Madrid squares everyone knows and strangely few people choose to sit in. El 5 de Tirso gives you a very good reason. It is a neo-tapas bar: cañas, conservas, torreznos, croquetas, tortilla, the usual Madrid vocabulary with the volume turned slightly sideways. Then come the bravas: long golden batons made from layer after layer of potato, fried until the edges go deeply crisp, with the brava sauce sitting next to them for dipping. Pick one up, dip it, repeat. A very Madrid tapa rebuilt just enough to become exciting again. ### Café de la Plaza *Cafe | Plaza Mayor · Calle Imperial 8* - Canonical place ID: madrid--cafe-de-la-plaza - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--cafe-de-la-plaza - Destination: Madrid - Place type: cafe - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Most terraces on Plaza Mayor are almost impossible to tell apart from the middle of the square. Café de la Plaza is the one with the best food, and a whole second restaurant hidden behind it. **First choose where.** **Terraza:** this is Plaza Mayor at full volume. Painted façades, arcades, people everywhere, Madrid moving through the square all day. This is still the epicenter of the city, and sitting here with something cold to drink is exactly how to use it. Get jamón, a pitcher of sangría and the bocadillo de calamares in brioche, an upscale, richer, much more delicious version of the Madrid classic. The arroces are excellent too. **Patio:** the beautiful part people outside have no idea is there. Walk through the Pestana Hotel, inside the former Casa de la Carnicería, and the building opens into a huge, leafy courtyard with trees, dense planting and a geometric glass roof overhead. It feels grander, calmer and much more polished: the proper sit-down version of Café de la Plaza, with a more ambitious kitchen and a very good wine list. Use it. **Secret:** before you leave, go upstairs to the salon and keep going until you reach its terrace. Suddenly the entire Plaza Mayor is below you. ### Fisher’s *Restaurant | Salamanca · Calle de Velázquez 41* - Canonical place ID: madrid--fisher-s - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--fisher-s - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Fisher’s brought one of Mexico’s great go-tos to Madrid and kept the fun intact. The Madrid one is a little more dressed up, but it is still Fisher’s: seafood with tons of lime, chile and acidic sauces, cold micheladas, great service and the Taco Fisher’s. Get the chocolatas if they have them. Go for football, Sunday lunch, dinner before going out, whatever gets you there. Fisher’s is just extremely fun. Get a Pato Beto too: ten shots at once, named after the duck they come on. And one Fisher’s rule you need to know: order a rum and Coke, gin and tonic, whisky soda, whatever, and when they pour the spirit, they do not stop until you tell them to stop. ### La Catapa *Restaurant | Ibiza / Retiro · Calle de Menorca 14* - Canonical place ID: madrid--la-catapa - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--la-catapa - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current La Catapa is a proper restaurant in the best sense: serious without being stiff, warm without being sloppy, and very, very good at feeding you. The cooking moves comfortably between classic and new: croquetas de jamon can share the menu with rock mussels in red curry, and both feel completely at home. That range is one of the best things about the kitchen. The product is excellent, the specials are always worth hearing, and the market keeps the menu moving. Nothing feels stuck, but nothing feels clever for the sake of it either. The wine is a huge part of the place. Niko Fernández-Trujillo runs a 44-page list, with everything from serious generosos to Champagne and Burgundy, plus a house-selected Manzanilla made with Hidalgo–La Gitana. Every month he picks five wines across five different categories, so the cellar is always moving too. The waiters know the menu, the specials and the wine properly; ask what came in that day and what to drink with it, and trust them. ### Charrúa *Restaurant | Calle del Conde de Xiquena 4 · 28004 Madrid* - Canonical place ID: madrid--charrua - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--charrua - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Charrúa is gorgeous: dark, candlelit, lots of wood, old beams, a velvet curtain at the entrance, but the whole room is really there to frame the parrilla. The cooking is Uruguayan in spirit rather than Spanish: wood and embers, no charcoal, no direct flame, with the parrilla open to the room. They bring in beef from Uruguay, Argentina, the US and Spain, so don’t overthink some mythical house cut. Order the cut you actually like. The quality is superb across the board and they cook it frighteningly well. ### La Manduca de Azagra *Restaurant | Calle de Sagasta 14 · 28004 Madrid* - Canonical place ID: madrid--la-manduca-de-azagra - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--la-manduca-de-azagra - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current La Manduca is an asador, but the vegetables are the reason it is different. Juan Miguel Sola and Anabel Arriezu came to Madrid from Azagra, in Navarra, and they brought the place with them more literally than that usually means: much of the produce still comes from their family there. The menu even calls the artichokes *de la tía Mari*, which tells you quite a lot about what is going on. The alcachofas are a must, and so are the pimientos del cristal, these incredibly thin, sweet Navarrese peppers that go over the grill until they soften and char. Then pay attention to whatever other vegetables are around, because these are not the usual vegetables that arrive on the side of the meat and get forgotten. The produce here can be the best part of the meal. The grill is still very much the point. You can have fish or a chuletón off it, but this is one of the few asadores where an artichoke can very reasonably be the thing you remember. ### Chocolatería San Ginés *Cafe | Pasadizo de San Ginés 5 · 28013 Madrid* - Canonical place ID: madrid--chocolateria-san-gines - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--chocolateria-san-gines - Destination: Madrid - Place type: cafe - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current The original San Ginés sits in a tiny passage off Calle Mayor, with green wood, white marble tables, mirrors and walls completely covered in photographs of famous people who have eaten there. Name a person and they have probably had these churros. San Ginés is huge now. There are other locations in Madrid, franchises abroad, branded chocolate, tins, merchandise; you can buy San Ginés chocolate on the other side of the world. And then you come back to this tiny passage and the original is still great. They make the churros in enormous wheels because they sell an absurd number of them, then cut them into the long straight pieces that arrive at the table. They are crisp, simple and made to be dunked into the chocolate, which is dark, very thick and almost spoonable. Get enough on there and the churro comes back looking ridiculous. It is one of those Madrid institutions that is actually still worth going to. ### Casa Canito / La Movida Madrileña *Restaurant | Calle de Recoletos 11, Recoletos* - Canonical place ID: madrid--casa-canito-la-movida-madrilena - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--casa-canito-la-movida-madrilena - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current **CASA CANITO** Canito is tiny and very good-looking: thick exposed rock, pale marble bars, metal stools, warm light. There are no reservations; it is first come, first served, and once it fills they start a waiting list. Get a caña or a vermouth, order a few plates and take a stool. The name is not random. Canito was José Enrique Cano Leal, the drummer from Tos. After he died, a tribute concert for him in 1980 became one of the nights most closely associated with the beginning of La Movida Madrileña. At the back of the bar there is an old cigarette machine. That is the entrance to the club. **LA MOVIDA MADRILEÑA** Behind it, the ceiling drops and everything turns red: brick vaults, rough stone, records, low arches and little rooms disappearing further into the caves. It actually feels secret. There is another entrance on Cid 1, but you need the password. So either you know what to say at an unmarked-looking door outside, or you come in through a cigarette machine from Canito. Around midnight it properly comes alive. Spanish eighties music, vinyl DJs, live bands on some nights. La Movida itself was loud, nocturnal, irreverent and wildly creative: punk and pop, fashion, film, art, sex, excess and completely different people ending up in the same rooms. Canito carries one of its actual origin stories; downstairs carries the part that still makes immediate sense forty years later: the music, the freedom and the night. ### El Landó *Restaurant | Plaza de Gabriel Miró 8, Las Vistillas* - Canonical place ID: madrid--el-lando - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--el-lando - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current El Landó is a grand Madrid restaurant hidden downstairs a few minutes from the Royal Palace. Dark wood everywhere, white tablecloths, low ceilings, and a staircase covered with the people who have passed through: Juan Carlos, Julio Iglesias, Pedro Almodóvar, Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand. This is the more low-key side of the Casa Lucio family, opened by Lucio Blázquez and run for decades by his brother-in-law Ángel González. Angelito, Ángel’s son, took over after him. The important part is that both of them are still there, moving through the room, touching tables and remembering people. And then there are the tomatoes. Get them. They are one of those ridiculous cases where a plate of sliced tomatoes becomes something you remember for the rest of your life. After that, order whatever sounds good. The kitchen is excellent across the board. Put a serious Ribera del Duero on the table. Casa Lucio is more famous. El Landó has better food and better service. More importantly, it has managed to keep them. ### Fratelli Figurato *Restaurant | Calle Alonso Cano 37, Chamberí* - Canonical place ID: madrid--fratelli-figurato - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--fratelli-figurato - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Fratelli Figurato makes the best pizza in Madrid. Go to the original on Alonso Cano. This is serious Neapolitan pizza: Riccardo Figurato is obsessive about the dough, flour, fermentation and how it cooks, and the place has spent years among the highest-ranked pizzerias in Europe. You can taste why. The dough is the point: light, blistered, full of flavor, so the actual pizza matters less than you would think. Pick whatever sounds good. For pizza this good, the place is wonderfully simple. Small room, a few tables, oven right there. One of Madrid’s great comfort places. ### Café Comercial *Cafe | Glorieta de Bilbao 7, Chamberí* - Canonical place ID: madrid--cafe-comercial - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--cafe-comercial - Destination: Madrid - Place type: cafe - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Café Comercial can be coffee and churros in the morning, cañas and tapeo on the Glorieta de Bilbao, a proper lunch, a meeting, drinks, dinner or whatever is happening upstairs. It is big, handsome, old and absurdly useful. That range is not new. Since 1887, politicians, writers, artists and filmmakers have used the Comercial to meet, work, eat, argue and spend hours here. Antonio Machado had a reserved corner; Arturo Pérez-Reverte used to write at the café. The place has spent well over a century being treated as much more than somewhere to get a coffee. Outside is for the Glorieta: noisy, busy, excellent people-watching, and particularly good with a cold caña in front of you. For a proper meal, go inside. The salon is gorgeous and grand: enormous mirrors, marble tables, dark wood, high ceilings and old lamps. It has the scale of a serious restaurant but still feels like a café you can walk into for coffee. One of the best stories about the Comercial came during Spain’s financial crisis. In 2012 it started keeping two chalkboards over the bar for *cafés pendientes*: buy your own coffee or sandwich and leave another one paid for whoever needed it. By 2015, around **9,000 coffees and sandwiches** had been served this way. By that point Café Comercial was not just an old café in Madrid. It had become a shared piece of the city. ### La Venencia *Bar | Calle de Echegaray 7, Centro* - Canonical place ID: madrid--la-venencia - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--la-venencia - Destination: Madrid - Place type: bar - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current During the Civil War, Republicans and journalists met at La Venencia, and the story goes that photographs were banned because Francoist spies could use them to identify people in the room. That history still feels completely present. The bar is dark and woody, with barrels behind the counter, old bullfighting posters on the walls, dim light and the smell of sherry soaked into everything. And somehow, it still runs almost entirely on its own terms. They serve sherry and only a few things to eat. If you know your sherry, order what you like; if you don’t, ask. No music, no photos, no tips, no cards. They still mark your tab in chalk directly on the wooden bar. La Venencia has refused almost every modern bar convention, and sitting there with a glass of sherry feels less like visiting an old place than briefly entering the Madrid that produced it. Which is why it’s so ridiculously cool. ### Viva Madrid *Bar | Barrio de las Letras · Calle de Manuel Fernández y González 7* - Canonical place ID: madrid--viva-madrid - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--viva-madrid - Destination: Madrid - Place type: bar - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Viva Madrid is basically a love letter to Madrid disguised as a very good bar. The downstairs room is gorgeous: old azulejos everywhere, a huge dark wooden bar, and that slightly over-the-top, deeply Madrileño look that would already be enough to make you want to stay. Then you look at the cocktail menu and realize they are actually taking the drinking very seriously too. Sit at the bar, or better, grab one of the tiny tables outside in the narrow Las Letras street and let the whole thing make sense. Beautiful old Madrid around you, excellent cocktails in front of you. Viva Madrid indeed. ### La Ferretería *Restaurant | Calle de Atocha 57, Centro* - Canonical place ID: madrid--la-ferreteria - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--la-ferreteria - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current La Ferretería was actually a ferretería, a hardware store, and they kept enough of it intact that the restaurant still has that slightly surreal feeling of eating inside a very beautiful old shop. The huge wooden counter is original, so are the drawers and cabinets behind it, and then downstairs the place opens into these brick-vaulted rooms filled with paintings and objects from owner Toñi Escapa’s collection. The food is Spanish at heart, but not in a traditionalist way: classics are cleaned up, changed around and presented with a lot more imagination without losing what made them good in the first place. ### Sala de Despiece *Restaurant | Alonso Cano, Chamberí* - Canonical place ID: madrid--sala-de-despiece - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--sala-de-despiece - Destination: Madrid - Place type: restaurant - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Sala de Despiece is just ridiculously fun. The whole meal is built around surprise, but unlike a lot of very creative restaurants, the tricks are not the point; the food underneath them is genuinely delicious, and usually smarter than you expect. Go hungry, order a lot and listen to the waiter. Give them some room, because they know what to bring, when to bring it and how far to push you. Don’t study the menu beforehand and definitely don’t look up every dish. Half the pleasure is having no idea what they are about to put in front of you, then realizing it actually tastes fantastic. ### Dry Martini *Bar | Casa Gallardo · Calle de Ferraz 2* - Canonical place ID: madrid--dry-martini - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--dry-martini - Destination: Madrid - Place type: bar - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Inside Casa Gallardo, the Dry Martini gets almost absurd attention. In hospitality, there is something admirable about refusing to stop at good enough. The difference between a good Martini and a perfect one is in the obsession with every detail: temperature, dilution, the ice, how little vermouth it can take, the few seconds in the mixing glass. The result is brutally cold, bone-dry, sharp and incredibly clean. Three metres of the ten-metre piano-black bar are reserved just for making Martinis. Above it, an illuminated counter records every one that leaves the bar. By 2023, they had made **54,781**. Safe to say they know their Martini. ### Club Pasión Habanos *Cigar club | Casa Gallardo · Calle Ferraz 2, 28008 Madrid* - Canonical place ID: madrid--club-pasion-habanos - Canonical source: https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/madrid#place-madrid--club-pasion-habanos - Destination: Madrid - Place type: club - Publication status: published - Editorial status: unmarked - Availability status: current Club Pasión Habanos is a properly comfortable place to smoke a cigar. It sits above Plaza de España, with huge windows over the square, dark green walls, parquet floors and big leather armchairs. The service is very good, the cigars are serious, and the whole room is built around sitting down properly and enjoying one. ## Keep exploring - [Seville](https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/seville) - [Marbella](https://jpthcorner.com/destinations/marbella)