Cenador de Amós

Anchovy, butter, and the long station

The anchovy arrives with pasiega butter, a small test of salt, fat, and bread. Jesús Sánchez, chef and owner of Cenador de Amós in Villaverde de Pontones, has made that Cantabrian product one of the house signatures, working from the 18th-century Casa-Palacio Mazarrasa since he opened the restaurant in 1993. Born in Navarra and adopted by Cantabria, Sánchez built the kitchen around the nearby coast, the vegetable garden, and the old mansion’s scale rather than against them. Cenador de Amós earned its first Michelin star in 1995, its second in 2016, and its third in 2019; the house also holds a Michelin Green Star and three Repsol Suns. The restaurant does not state Sánchez’s training lineage. What it does state, clearly, is the discipline of place: Cantabrian anchovy, Bay of Biscay fish, local and seasonal produce, and a tasting-menu format that lets the kitchen control pace from the first bite to the last bread basket.

A tasting menu built from Cantabria

The program moves through named menus including Desde La Raíz and La Gran Experiencia, with the anchovy in butter acting less as a flourish than as a thesis. Sánchez treats the Cantabrian anchovy as a product with its own register; he has been recognized as a world ambassador of the Cantabrian anchovy since 1993. Around it, the kitchen works in ember cooking, curing, fritters, and sauces that keep the product legible. Bay of Biscay black monkfish comes from the fire. Pigeon appears with cacao, beetroot, jus, and black garlic brioche. Tuna cheek can take on a beef sauce and green chilli anchovy. The bread program has its own weight in the meal, with house-baked sourdough on a 72-hour cycle from a dedicated bakery room. Appetizers often begin away from the main dining room, then the menu settles into the pass, where the rhythm is formal but not stiff. The craft is cumulative: a cone of omelette, cod curd, strawberry vermouth, cheese from Cantabria and Asturias, and a pre-dessert of passion fruit, apricot, and elderflower.

Under frescoes, before the pass

The room keeps the old house in view. Rustic stone, modern lines, and historic frescoes share the same service, with a glass-paned pavilion and terrace used for the early part of the meal when weather and service allow. The noise stays low enough for the small mechanics to register: the landing of bread, the reset of cutlery, the kitchen team’s flat caps moving between stations. This is not a room built to disappear. Casa-Palacio Mazarrasa gives the meal its frame, and the kitchen answers with a version of Cantabria that is edited, paced, and carried plate by plate through anchovy, monkfish, pigeon, and sourdough.