La Montería

Battered prawns at the pass

The battered prawns arrive crisp, head on, a small test of timing before the plate leaves the kitchen. La Montería in Madrid works from habits set long before any current shift: Juan José Román and Mercedes founded the restaurant in 1963, with Juan José at the bar and Mercedes at the stoves. The line they set was not narrow. Andalusian cooking sat beside Catalan, Basque, Navarran, and Gallegan influence, a set of regional gestures gathered through travel and kept in the service of product. La Montería still reads that way, as a Retiro restaurant built from market cooking rather than display. The present kitchen keeps to game, wild fish, tuna, stews, and tapas that can stand at the bar or move through a full table. Michelin has marked the restaurant with a Bib Gourmand. The lineage here is domestic before it is institutional: a family-run room, a bar that mattered from the beginning, and a kitchen shaped by Mercedes Román’s long first command of the stoves.

Tuna, game, batter, escabeche

The program turns on recognisable Spanish preparations pushed by careful product choice. Gamba gabardina invertida is the house signal, a battered prawn that depends on heat, coating, and the moment it leaves the fryer. Tuna appears several ways: red tuna with soy shoots and salmorejo, tuna belly with black garlic aioli, tartar with wasabi, and bonito in escabeche with coconut and charred pepper. Game holds its place too, especially venison tenderloin with wine and foie, and warm partridge salad. The kitchen also sends hake with rice and red prawn, corvina with boletus, tomato confit, and rosemary oil, oxtail, baked mussels, lascas with foie, and small sweets such as chocolate balls. The structure allows two speeds, small plates at the counter or a longer progression at table, and the cooking keeps its Spanish grammar visible: battering, escabeche, aioli, reduction, grilling. The wine program follows that same restraint, with Spanish bottles chosen to sit beside seafood, tuna, and game rather than pull attention from them. Lalama, a mencía named in the room’s reputation, is part of that conversation.

A rectangular room behind the bar

The room begins with the bar, then pulls into a small rectangular dining room behind it. After a facelift, the space carries a contemporary Nordic inflection, simple surfaces, a brighter hand with light, and a quiet enough register for conversation. It is not a room that asks to be admired before the food arrives. The counter keeps the tavern memory close, while the tables let the kitchen stretch from tapas into full plates. A recent expansion eased the old pressure on the room without making it feel large. Staff names surface in the rhythm of service: Javier, Claudia, Eugenio, Adrian, and Nair are part of how regulars describe the place, not as ceremony, but as continuity. In Retiro, near Parque del Retiro, La Montería feels anchored by repetition: prawns in batter, tuna cut cleanly, game in reduction, and a bar that still carries Juan José Román’s first station.