You know you’re old when your baby pictures are actual woodcut engravings. But if you’re the oldest restaurant in the business, you have to somehow stay fresh.
It fared well enough last century, many famous figures say.
Ernest Hemingway himself wrote of Botín in his 1932 book featuring Spanish bullfighters, “Death in the Afternoon”:
Sobrino de Botín was favored by famous patrons like Hemingway for its excellent food and noteworthy age. But he is both old and dead. Might some celebrity closer to our time give a more contemporary review?
Alongside literary giant James A. Michener, British author Frederick Forsyth, 85 and still alive, mentioned the restaurant in a novel. In his Cold War-era thriller “Icon” (1996), Botín’s medieval cellar makes a cameo as a rendezvous point for spies:
Today, a dining room rests in the downstairs winery that “has remained unchanged since the 16th century,” one of Botín’s three current owners Antonio González, 72, told The Epoch Times. It was part of an old inn before Botín ever opened.
Mr. González still has papers kept by its then proprietor. These include a privilege of exemption from lodgers (privilegio de exención de huéspedes) to keep out royal cortege visitors who might freeload at the inn.
The French cook Jean Botín and his Asturian wife later arrived and opened a small tavern in 1725. That became the restaurant we know today. He meant to work for a nobleman under the powerful Hapsburgs.
By then, the Spanish royal court had begun a grand refurbishment of Madrid’s Plaza Mayor—from 1620 when it was still “thronged with rabble-rousers engaged in various activities,” Botín’s website writes.
Crooked streets were made straight and given trade-specific names as the area became a commercial enclave: There was Tanners Bank (Ribera de Curtidores); Blacksmith Plaza (Plaza de Herradores); Cutlery Street (Calle Cuchilleros); and so on.
Along the street called Calle Cuchilleros, the Botíns started renovating to close an existing arcade and open the doors of a small inn.
A slab with the date remains in the building’s entrance today. Even the ancient wood oven still in the restaurant dates from that year.
“Botín’s main specialty is the roast, cooked in the original oven from 1725, with oak wood,” Mr. González said. “The star dish is roast suckling pig and also roast lamb.”
The restaurant purportedly has kept the antique oven’s flame burning, never to be extinguished, all this time.
From those early years until well into the 18th century, meat and other foodstuffs were harder to obtain than fuel to fire the ovens in Spain. Selling such goods was seen as an imposition that could jeopardize other trades. Restaurateurs could serve only what guests brought to be cooked, hence the saying:
“In Spanish inns you only found what the traveler brought.”
Besides said authors, older famous names have glitzed the establishment like Francisco Goya, the painter, who reportedly worked there as a waiter while awaiting acceptance into the Royal Academy in 1765.
After the owner died and his wife’s nephew took over, it became Sobrino de Botín. The name has stuck.
At the time, Botín wasn’t considered a restaurant per se but a tavern. Back then, the term “restaurant” was reserved for the few rather exclusive places that tried to emulate Parisian establishments.
Botín became a dining place for members of the military until the war’s end. After a terrible period following this, the González boys Antonio, José, and Carlos took over, making Botín what it is today.
The original team of 7 employees expanded to 89. The former main floor establishment swallowed up four floors. The same great suckling pig is served in the old-fashioned manner. Botín’s dashing atmosphere lasted.
So, after all these centuries, what keeps Botín fresh? Its patrons constantly coming back?
It takes more than decorum and “historical charm,” Mr. González tells us. The key to lasting so long is having “loyalty to the culinary personality of the house.”
Botín’s culinary roots are Castilian and Spanish, he said, as interpreted by his talented grandfather, Emilio González.
Excellent customer service and top-quality ingredients are also essential, the website adds.
“Three or four times every week, the restaurant receives suckling pigs straight from Segovia and lambs from Spain’s renowned magic triangle: Sepúlveda-Aranda-Riaza,” they write.
Enticingly, they add, “The lambs and suckling pigs are roasted slowly and carefully in the old wood-fired oven.”
But what? It’s all talk, you say?
Well, the proof is in the pudding—and on the palate. So if you’re in Madrid, find a seat at Botín and judge the lamb roast yourself. With all this suckling pig talk, we might even join you.
