Aileen Weintraub at Smithsonian Magazine:
Legend has it that 18th-century Romantic painter Francisco Goya was once a porter here. Ernest Hemingway set the closing scene of The Sun Also Rises at a table in an upstairs dining room, and the signatures of Spanish kings throughout the centuries adorn one of the walls. There is also most definitely a ghost in the wine cellar.
Sobrino de Botín, confirmed by the Guiness Book of World Records as the oldest restaurant in the world, just celebrated 300 years of scintillating history.
Opened in 1725 in the center of Madrid, it’s the longest continuously running restaurant on record—they kept the soldiers fed during the Spanish Civil War, and they even stoked the flames of their 300-year-old oven every day during the Covid-19 pandemic when the world was on lockdown.
But this upscale eatery, lovingly known as Botín, is not revered for its sophisticated gastronomy.
More here.
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