Taste Atlas, a platform conceived as the “Wikipedia of food”, provides information about the best local ingredients and traditional dishes of each country, as well as the places where they can be found. In 2024, a tavern in Madrid has been ranked 14th among the 100 most legendary restaurants in the world, four places below El Pimpi, the culinary corner that sweeps the center of Malaga with its pringá.
Casa Labra: history and gastronomy in the center of Madrid.
In the 1900s there were only 1,500 taverns in Madrid. One of them was Casa Labra, at number 12 Tetuán Street. Founded in 1860, the place is a living testimony of how places to eat and drink were when the city was still far behind Paris, London and Brussels -amongother European capitals-in terms of infrastructure.
During the first half of the 20th century, Casa Labra was a regular haunt of the country’s artists and politicians. In fact, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party was founded there in 1879. This event gave the tavern a prominent place in the history of Madrid, whose inhabitants already had a record of how well they ate there at that time.
The typical dishes of the house -they have beenprepared in the same way since the 19th century- are the tajada de bacalao (cod slice) and the croquettes of the same fish. They also make soldaditos de pavía, that Andalusian appetizer that is so popular in Madrid’s bars.
This is not the first time that Casa Labra has made it into the gastronomic ranking of Taste Atlas. In 2023, the tavern was ranked 24th, ten positions lower than this year.