Where to get the best tapas in Madrid? The city has so many great tapas bars, so you’ll find plenty of places to do that. Here are some of my favorites. If you have enough time in the city, try your hand and find your own favorite bars.
1. Tapas at an exquisite wine bar
If you want wine with your tapas, visit Tempranillo in Madrid’s most popular tapas street, Calle de Cava Baja, in the La Latina district. There’s a good reason why it’s sneaking into first place on my list of great tapas bars in Madrid.
The wine bar is cosy, with a brown wooden bar on the end wall and a shelf behind it, crammed with wine bottles, brown wooden pillars and furniture and rough stone walls. Tempranillo has tasty tapas and over 100 local wines on its excellent wine list. If you don’t know the local labels, trust the waiter’s recommendations. Try a plate of black-footed ham, or a pintxo (tapa on bread) with octopus and caramelised onions with the wine.
The place has few tables and is crowded at dinner time. So come early if you want to secure your place.
Tempranillo
Calle Cava Baja 38 (show on map)
2. Kitch and generous portions
A few blocks from Tempranillo, you’ll find La Perejila behind a green facade with hand-painted signs and potted plants. The small tapas bar is most reminiscent of a kitschy allotment house, decorated with a great deal of humour. Green Amager shelves abound with coffee sets, silver dishes on feet, vintage glasses and plastic flowers, and the walls are crammed with mirrors in gold frames, porcelain plates and blackboards on which the menu is written in chalk.
The waiters are very welcoming and relaxed. The food tastes good and homemade, and the portions are generous like grandma’s. La Perejila’s albondigas (meatballs), mussels and cheese plate are my favourites. I also recommend tasting the cava.
La Perejila
Calle Cava Baja 25 (show on map)
3. Delicacies in romantic surroundings
Located in Barrio de las Letras, Casa González is the perfect place for romantics to gaze deeply into each other’s eyes over a round marble table while sipping good wine and sharing delicacies. If you’re coming alone, try to get a table by the window where you can sit and study the bustle of the street. The décor is pure romance, and the selection of charcuterie such as sausage and ham, as well as Spanish and foreign cheeses, is good. Also try the salty and smoked fish and the pate with the sweet sherry Pedro Ximénez.
Owner Paco (whose grandfather founded the place in 1931) has the cellar stocked with over 250 different wines from great Spanish vineyards.
Casa Gonzalez also functions as a shop, so you can take home some of the delights lined up on the shelves and at the bar counter.
Casa González
Calle León 12 (show on map)
4. Experimental Basque tapas
The northern Spanish version of tapas, pintxos, are eaten standing at the bar of the authentic Basque bar Txirimiri in the La Latina district. The raw materials are top quality and the chefs are constantly experimenting with new versions. Choose your pintxos from the platters on the bar. The selection includes hot and cold dishes such as salmon wrapped in cream, tortilla (Spanish omelette with potato), beef tenderloin with caramelised onions and pepper, burger with porcini sauce and grilled brie with jam.
Txirimiri also offers sharing dishes such as black rice with prawns, pasta, salads, soups and desserts, and you can also choose to sit at one of the tables and eat. Txirimiri has three other branches in Madrid.
Txirimiri
Calle Humilladero 6 (show on map)
5. Anchovies and beer at one of the city’s oldest bars
La Dolores is a typical Spanish tapas bar with tiles on the walls, classic tapas on the menu, a good atmosphere and metres of beer mugs and bottles on the shelves. Located in the Barrio de las Letras, the bar is one of the oldest in the city and has both loyal waiters who have been serving beer and tapas for years and faithful regulars.
La Dolores is a popular place to meet up with friends for a pre-dinner aperitivo, and into the evening it’s packed at the long bar. So there’s no doubt that Dolores is also a local favourite among good tapas bars in Madrid.
Order a caña (draught beer) and bouquerones (anchovies marinated in wine vinegar), the house speciality.
La Dolores
Plaza Jesús 4 (show on map)
6. Tapas and curiosities for all tastes
Los Gatos (the cats, as Madrid’s inhabitants are also called) is a stone’s throw from La Dolores and is at least as popular. The bar has a huge selection of tapas and good beers. The decor is a most peculiar. It’s full of quirky things like a stuffed bull’s head, tiles with skeletons, shelves lined with old dolls, an old gramophone, an altar boy with sunglasses and a full-size lamppost. The floor is littered with used napkins and empty mussel and shrimp shells.
Los Gatos’ speciality is jamón (ham) and baby onion. Also try the pan con tomate (bread with tomato) and smoked duck breast. You can sit at tables at the back of the room, but it’s most fun to hang out at the bar.
Los Gatos
Calle de Jesús 2 (show on map)
7. Gourmet pass in the old cinema
In Platea Madrid you will find not just one, but many tapas bars. Set in a converted old cinema in Madrid’s fashionable Salamanca district, Platea Madrid is a multi-level gourmet and entertainment venue. Platea Madrid boasts several Michelin-starred chefs and areas dedicated to tapas, desserts, bistro, cocktail bar, nightclub and a stage that regularly offers entertainment.
On the ground floor you’ll find the tapas area with gourmet pasties such as pintxos, banderias (bite-sized morsels on toothpicks), deep-fried squid, oysters and caviar, deep-fried artichokes and
berenjena con miel
(aubergines fried in honey). Just buy one tapa each place so you can taste a little different.
Platea Madrid
Calle de Goya 5-7 (show on map)
Find tips for more places to eat in the guide to great restaurants in Madrid.
