The Oldest Restaurant In The World Just Celebrated 3 Centuries Of Serving Diners

Modern diners are often fickle. We're so used to new restaurants opening up every week that we treat them like how children play with toys — our favoritism lasts until a new shiny thing arrives. For a restaurant to thrive, it must consistently outshine its competitors — a strategy El Sobrino de Botín (simply known as Botín) has mastered. Opened since 1725, Botín is the world's oldest restaurant, according to the Guinness World Records.

For the past three centuries, Botín has fed customers at its location in Madrid's bustling city center. A French cook named Jean Botín and his Asturian wife opened the now historic establishment in the 18th century. The same large wood-fired oven from this time period — rumored to have never been turned off – still infuses dishes with deep, earthy flavors. Botín's nephew eventually inherited the restaurant (giving it its current name, since "sobrino" means "nephew" in Spanish). 

The property was then sold in the 1930s to the Gonzáles-Martin family, which has maintained the restaurant's original structure for three generations while turning the cellar and upper floors into additional dining rooms. This family kept the restaurant running even during the Spanish Civil War, sometimes taking refuge in the wine cellars when Madrid was bombed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the owners ensured the oven remained fired up, somehow making it through a time when many legacy restaurants around the world closed their doors.

For centuries, Botín has specialized in slow-roasted suckling pig. The restaurant's most popular dish is made using traditional Spanish techniques and ingredients, and the pigs are roasted over oak logs – allowing the meat to retain moisture while the skin achieves a perfect crisp. Botín has gained fame thanks to its age as well as its connections to history. Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya once served as a dishwasher at the restaurant, while author Ernest Hemingway included a dish's name in his novel "The Sun Also Rises." Yet meals remain affordable for diners, with many costing €32 (around $38 in USD) or less — unlike the world's most expensive cheesecake in New York City. Botín's commitment to authenticity draws everyday customers from around the world, to members of the Spanish Royal Family.

Besides its iconic roasted pig, the extensive menu offers other classic Spanish dishes like acorn-fed Iberian jam, gazpacho (a delicious cold vegetable soup), garlic shrimp, and Catalan cream dessert. Visitors interested in the restaurant's history as much as its food can schedule a tour of the four dining rooms, cellar, tunnels, and oven area before sitting down to enjoy lunch or dinner. While several establishments join Botín among the oldest restaurants on Earth, many have either closed, moved locations, or evolved too much to be considered the same establishment. Not Botín. To dine here is to savor a piece of Spanish history.