30 Best Restaurants in Madrid, From Tapas Bars to Omakase Tastings - CNN

Carnivores will happily eat here. If you live in Madrid or visit the city regularly you’ve likely heard about Lana a million times, and perhaps you’ve already eaten at the restaurant almost that many times too. If you haven’t been yet, there’s no reason to wait any longer. Lana has earned its ways on to this list of the best restaurants in Madrid, and its fame extends beyond the city. It came in ninth on the list of the World's 101 Best Steak Restaurants. At this Argentinian parrilla where a sign with a sheep welcomes diners, you can expect that every loin, chop, and other cut of meat will be tender, tasty, and with the perfect degree of marbling. The cuts come from animals between 10 and 12 years old, which assures an optimal fat content while the kitchen flawlessly cooks the cuts to exactly the point that you request. We expect you might make it a regular stop whenever you are visiting or passing through Madrid.

Sacha, a twinkly candlelit bistro blissfully removed from the busy center, is the ultimate date-night spot with dim lighting and white tablecloths. At first glance, the menu seems simple—early-spring options might include cardoons with salt cod, lamb chops with garlic shoots, or, plainly, lentils. But don't be fooled: The execution is consistently flawless. Don't miss house specialties like the decadent faux lasagna layered with uni. Strike up a conversation with Sacha, the larger-than-life owner, and you might never leave. He and his staff make you feel like you're at an intimate dinner party among friends.

Once you step through the doors of Charrúa, you’ll forget for a moment that you’re in the center of Spain’s lively capital. The intimate and cozy interior embraces diners with its wooden furniture, warm blankets, and flickering candelabras. The soft lighting and the enchanting glow of the flames create an attractive setting that’s considered by many to be one of the most romantic restaurants in the capital. The cooks grill exquisite cuts of meat from countries as varied as Uruguay, Finland, Germany, and Spain. We recommend the bone-in Ayrshire beef ribeye, the Prime Black Angus Nebraska tenderloin, the Holstein beef ribeye, and the Galician beef ribeye aged for 60 days.

They came, they saw, and they conquered. The first restaurant from Rafa Zafra, Anna Gotanegra, and Ricardo Acquista has won over Madrileños with its celebration of the bounty of the sea, which arrives to the capital every day from Spain’s Costa Brava, Galicia, and the port of Cádiz, as well as France. The menu is a journey through a variety of different cooking techniques used for fish and shellfish: served raw, steamed, boiled, grilled, sauteed in olive oil, and more. They also explain that “seafood will be cooked on the grill with the menu changing with the seasons. The dishes reflect the efforts of the fishermen and where the Virgen del Carmen chooses to lead them.” Some of the best dishes include the prawns from Roses, on Spain’s Costa Brava, (“the queen of the house”) and the Estimar bikini sandwich (a pressed, grilled sandwich, here made with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and caviar).

Madrid has establishments where food gets the sci-fi treatment—a centrifuged this, a spherified that—yet a dwindling number of restaurants offering Old World European luxuries like foie gras, caviar, and roasted rack of lamb. Enter Saddle, a restaurant so unabashedly classic (bread carts! leatherback menus! ambient jazz!) that it feels, ironically, fresh. This is an ambitious restaurant with a laser-focused kitchen that understands nostalgia as well as it does service and culinary technique.

Awash with creams, taupes, and earth tones, Dos Cielos' subdued décor belies an ambitious Spanish-fusion menu with punchy, concentrated flavors that'll make you ooh and aah. Sure, it's technically a hotel restaurant, enveloped by the Gran Meliá Palacio de los Duques, but with the Michelin-starred Torres brothers (Sergio and Javier) calling the shots, it's anything but safe or bland. Most dishes in the eight-course tasting are vegetable- and seafood-centric; depending on what's in season, you might be treated to delicate peas in Iberian ham broth, king crab dumplings, or oven-roasted John Dory.

At this intimate restaurant, which is also from Dani García, only 14 diners get to enjoy the Fire Omakase experience where the chef leads them through a series of courses featuring seasonal products at their point of perfection. “It’s a tasting menu focused on grilled dishes but, above all, it’s an approach to cooking that focuses on the diner and not on the chef’s ego,” says the chef from Marbella. “Here, the method of cooking each dish becomes an indispensable part of the final product, turning smoke into seasoning, and adding a unique touch to each fish or shellfish, vegetable, or meat.” The restaurant’s dramatic and surprising interiors are the work of Astet Studio and Neolith, who were also responsible for the designs of two other restaurants from García, Leña Marbella and Leña Madrid.

Ask local food writers and chefs where to try the city's best wild mushrooms, and they'll invariably point you to El Cisne Azul, an unsuspecting hole-in-the-wall in Chueca. A mycologist's paradise, the restaurant sources prime seasonal mushrooms, from crinkly morels to mustard-yellow chanterelles to toadstool-like amanitas. Try them a la plancha, anointed with nothing more than olive oil and a flick of crunchy salt, or folded into scrambled eggs. Goat cheese and foie gras are optional—and arguably life-changing—add-ons. A selection of cheeses and simple grilled meats rounds out the menu.

One bar, eight seats, and three cuisines (Japanese, French, and Nordic): Playing Solo was created with the goal of leading diners through a unique experience that draws on the culinary traditions of the countries that have most influenced chef Luis Caballero. “We were inspired by the izakaya restaurants of Japan where the chef stands in front of diners and talks to them while preparing their meal,” explains Caballero. You can opt for the full seasonal tasting menu, which is $124 with vegetarian options available upon request, or the short tasting menu at $84 (only available at lunch from Tuesday to Friday). A sargo and saffron broth; pea, daikon, ginger, squid, and lemon stew; cod brandade; canette de dombes with katsu curry; and kombucha made with rhubarb and sake lees are some of the surprising dishes waiting on the menu.

The waiting list here is almost as long as the rave reviews praising this restaurant. The French Basque bistro from Patxi Zumáragga and Patricia Haramboure is, without a doubt, one of the most exciting restaurants in the city at the moment. “Every morning, we get word from our trusted sources on the Bay of Biscay—the inside information on the best fish caught that day and which we then have in our kitchen just hours later,” says the team at Haramboure, where the constantly evolving menu includes non-seafood surprises too like the fermented cabbage terrine and the celery with a duck glaze.

Meat hooks, styrofoam butcher containers, and black-and-yellow barricade tape define the décor, which could be summed up as high-fashion abattoir. A zany gastro-temple to nose-to-tail dining, Sala de Despiece jump-started the Chamberí neighborhood's culinary revolution. The market-driven menu spotlights Spain's finest seasonal ingredients such as sweet Tudela artichokes, blistered green piparras, and red tuna from the Murcian coast. Expect table-side pyrotechnics, deconstructed classics, and DIY dishes, like the pancetta "Rolex" smeared with foie and truffle purée and furled into a one-bite epiphany.

Casa Dani is the kind of no-frills neighborhood bar where napkins litter the floor, cafés con leche (more on coffee in Spain here) come in half-pint glasses, and servers holler orders through the kitchen window. In other words, it's the last place you'd expect to find the city's most exquisite tortilla española: Spanish potato omelet. The kitchen averages 400 a day, cracking 2,000 eggs and frying 1,700 pounds of potatoes in the process. One bite of the still-warm omelet—a holy trinity of oil-poached potatoes, caramelized onions, and oozy egg—and you'll understand why the dish is in such high demand.

Commanding a waitlist longer than most of Madrid's Michelin-starred restaurants—bank on at least three months—Cruz Blanca de Vallecas is a modest tavern on the outskirts of town. It's also the improbable home of Madrid's most iconic dish: cocido madrileño, a boiled dinner of chickpeas, vegetables, and assorted sausages and meats. Chef Antonio Cosmen's rendition is downright transcendent, with creamy garbanzo beans from Arévalo—he buys the town's entire crop—smoky chorizo, and a jamón-scented broth so rich it jellifies at room temperature. (Another famed version can be found at Sylkar.)

A legendary flamenco nightclub in the heart of Madrid's tourist-swarmed center might be the last place you'd expect to find Michelin-starred dining, but at Corral de la Morería, there's as much art on the plate as there is onstage. The menu—modern Spanish with winks of Andalusia—consists of dishes like wild sea bass draped with spring onions and Ibérico bacon and shatteringly crisp Catalan flatbread topped with garlicky late-summer vegetables.

You'll feel expensive entering El Paraguas, a low-ceilinged parlor with cushy velvet chairs, ironed white linens, and fresh-cut flowers. The Asturian (where the town of Cudillero lies) fine dining menu reads like a paean to minimalist cooking with seasonal, and often local, ingredients like baby artichokes, white asparagus, pheasant, and milk-fed lamb. Seafood lovers shouldn't miss the cocochas de merluza, pleasingly gelatinous hake cheeks crowned with a runny egg yolk. The hushed, well-appointed restaurant lends itself nicely to formal occasions like business dinners and family celebrations.

There's lots to say about Roostiq, the sleek fire-cooking hotspot in Chueca district, but “pork cracklings and Champagne” might be enough: This wham-bam combo has had local food writers drooling since the restaurant's 2018 inception. But Roostiq isn't just another tapas spot with a viral dish or two; it's a new breed of restaurant, an asador (Spanish barbecue house) redefined for the 21st century that's all about the fuego, which you can smell the moment you walk through the door.

Heads, kidneys, tongues, and other innards define the menu at La Tasquería, a newcomer whose name is a play on the words “tasca” (pub) and “casquería” (offal shop). Once ubiquitous on working-class dinner tables across Spain—yet virtually vanished from the culinary zeitgeist today—organ meats have a new champion in Javi Estévez, whose dishes like fried lambs' ears and braised rabbit tongues with snails are creating fans out of even the most squeamish eaters.

You're at the whim of chef-owner Norberto Jorge at Casa Benigna—and, trust us, that's a good thing. You can start your low-carb diet mañana; the rice dishes, cooked over open flame to al dente perfection in copper pans are a revelation even to seasoned paella lovers. Whether you opt for the traditional Valencian, brimming with romano beans and succulent rabbit; the arroz negro, briny with fresh squid ink; or some other rice dish, save room for the the caramelized socarrat—Spain's answer to tahdig—stuck to the bottom of the pan.

All that's missing from El Rincón de Jaén I, an Andalusian fever dream, are twirling flamenco dancers. Under the gaze of a gigantic bull head, Barrio Salamanca denizens snack on tapas with toothpicks and toss back sherries and ice-cold half-pints. There are seasonal vegetables a la plancha drizzled with olive oil, nose-to-tail mains—don't miss the crispy lamb sweetbreads—and oven-roasted fish showered with parsley. The city's most sublime light lunch might be the ensalada de ventresca: peeled tomato, shaved onion, and flaked tuna belly, all sluiced with good olive oil and sherry vinegar.

Don't be fooled by Angelita's tourist-jammed location a block from Gran Vía; this wine-centric destination restaurant would be packed even if it were on the outskirts of town. Year-round deliveries from the owner's family farm put the vegetable dishes an echelon above the rest. You may think you know pisto, Spain's answer to ratatouille served in taverns across central Spain, but you've never had it like this, crowned with a perky orange yolk and confettied with fried egg white “dust.” Nor will you find a more succulent Iberian pig sirloin than the one at Angelita's.

You’ll likely go to Fismuler to try their cheesecake, famous throughout Madrid, but it’s the excellence of every dish on the menu that will bring you back. The restaurant from La Ancha Group offers an experience where every course appeals to all the senses. Each table is different and every dish created by Patxi Zumárraga and Nino Reduello is a simple, authentic, and unpretentious delight. The menu changes daily but there are some classics that are always available such as the San Román escalope (prepared tableside with egg and grated truffle), the Majorcan sobrasada omelette, and the rice with artichokes and sea snails.

Stick to old-school Spanish restaurants in Madrid, and you're bound to tire of the stodgy stews, fried seafood, and umpteen pork preparations that keep the siesta tradition alive. Fayer and Argentine-Israeli menu are the antidotes to that heavy eating. If this is your first Argentine-Israeli meal, you're in for a treat. Whet your appetite with hot, za'atar-dusted pita dipped into beet hummus or baba ghanouj, enriched with top-shelf Israeli tahini. Or mix and match cuisines by throwing a couple of juicy Argentine beef empanadas into the mezze spread.

The pizzas here are a must, made with stone-ground Castilian flours, Riojan vegetables, and Galician cheese. They get their signature chew from a novel leavening agent: wild yeast “waters” that the Sardinian pizzaiolo concocts using leftover fruit from the kitchen. Simple seasonal salads, roasted vegetable dishes, and roast meats round out the Mediterranean menu. Distinctive drinks include alcohol-free tipples, like small-batch sodas, and low-intervention Spanish wines, like single-estate Valencian rosé. Boasting one of Madrid's largest courtyards, Mo is a no-brainer pick for groups of all sizes. Mo is a venture focused on sustainability and economic justice: it's staffed in large part by at-risk youth, refugees, and other marginalized folks.

A tapas bar is usually known for one or two specialties, but here, nearly every dish is worth visiting for. Kickstart your salivary glands with a gilda—a Basque brochette stacked with a anchovies, olives, and pickled hot peppers that will make you pucker—before tearing into retro Madrileño mains like fried pig ear soaked in spicy brava sauce and meatballs served alongside a mound of hand-cut fries. The burst-in-your-mouth chocolate croquetas are the dessert menu's sleeper hit. Vermouth on draft and eclectic yet affordable Spanish wines by the glass are wonderful sidekicks to whatever you're eating. Make El Maño a stop on a longer tapas crawl or settle in for a full meal: This is no-frills taberna dining at its finest.

It might as well be 1970, the year the García family opened Sylkar on a sleepy side street in Chamberí: Chorizo links hang behind the bar, demitasse spoons clink onto saucers, and white-clad waiters scurry between tables of raucous regulars, cracking jokes and over-pouring wine. At the kitchen window, Alfredo, the owner, holds court from a barstool, greeting guests while leafing through the sports section of El País. He glances up occasionally to call out orders to the veteran cooks frying croquettes and flipping tortillas from muscle memory.

Chef David Muñoz is determined to make DiverXO the “best restaurant in the world”—his words, not ours—and according to some critics, he's well on his way to achieving that goal. His tasting menus, aptly called canvases, entail Jackson Pollock–style sauce splatters, pluming dry ice towers, and inventive Asian-inflected dishes (think: naan orbs covered in truffle shavings and acidulated parmesan) that border on art. It's the stuff culinary dreams are made of.

Madrid's Chinese population tripled between 2015 and 2017, and that surge has been a boon to the international food scene; case in point, Casa Lafu. In the split-level dining room, outfitted with pleasing rice paper lamps and velvet chairs, Madrid natives and Chinese expats unite over hot pot dishes cooked tableside in bubbling cauldrons of stock. The menu also includes an encyclopedic variety of made-to-order dishes hailing from every corner of China. Sate your Sichuan cravings with chili oil wontons before gobbling up some Cantonese-style dim sum, or Shanghainese roast duck.

Hidden up six flights of stairs in an unremarkable apartment building, Casa Hortensia teleports you to the cider houses of Asturias, the misty northern region on the Cantabrian coast that Anthony Bourdain called the most “extraordinary place” he'd ever visited. The menu reads like a highlight reel of Asturian cuisine. There's cachopo, fried beef cutlets with a molten ham-and-cheese center; chorizo links braised in cider; fresh seafood platters; and—the restaurant's specialty—fabada, Spain's answer to cassoulet enriched with pork belly and smoky blood sausage.

There’s no need to go to the seashore when you have a restaurant like Desde 1911, from the seafood supplier Pescaderías Coruñesas. Among the honors the restaurant has earned was being named the best new restaurant in Europe in 2022 by the website Opinionated About Dining. “Desde 1911 is an homage to the family legacy of Pescaderías Coruñesas, grounded in a constant pursuit of excellence and a profound respect for the sea. It is a celebration of generations of fishmongers who have managed to make Madrid the fresh fish and shellfish capital of Spain,” the restaurant says. After nearly a decade at the helm of the family business, María Juliana Azpíroz and Evaristo García fulfilled their dream and opened this restaurant where the menu changes daily to reflect the best hauls pulled from the sea each day.

Madrid’s most refined palettes make the pilgrimage to this restaurant on the banks of the Manzanares River. Osa has an open kitchen, intimate and interconnected dining rooms, a wine cellar, and a lounge waiting for guests who want to enjoy a pre- or post-dinner drink. The restaurant from Sara Peral and Jorge Muñoz has earned a Michelin star and two soles, or suns, from the latest edition of the Spanish culinary authority, the Guía Repsol. The restaurant serves two tasting menus each day. The larger one, the Osa, is $205 and includes 18 to 20 small courses of seasonal and inventive dishes. The shorter option, the little osa is $175 and includes 13 to 14 courses—still a sufficient number to experience the restaurant’s culinary excellence. A red mullet omakase tasting, pig’s trotter stuffed with rooster and porchetta, saltwater eel, pigeon dokuganryu, and homemade zampone have been past dishes. Diners can only wonder what they will come up with for the next season.