
Chef in Residence
David Alfonso
Chef

Triciclo holds a Michelin Plate in Madrid's Las Letras district, where a three-chef team delivers modern Spanish cooking grounded in seasonal produce and sustainability. The €€ price point sits well below the city's starred tier, with multiple menu formats and half-portion options that reward exploratory ordering. Closed Sundays; open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday.
<h2>Las Letras and the Mid-Range Creative Scene</h2><p>Triciclo is a restaurant in Madrid's Centro district, serving Modern Spanish Tapas with Fusion at an approachable €€ price point. At the leading, addresses like <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/diverxo-madrid-restaurant">DiverXO (Progressive - Asian, Creative)</a>, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/deessa-madrid-restaurant">Deessa</a>, and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/coque-madrid-restaurant">Coque (Spanish, Creative)</a> operate at the €€€€ level, with multi-course tasting menus, extended booking windows, and the formal choreography that comes with Michelin-starred ambition. Below that, a smaller and arguably more useful tier has emerged: Michelin-recognised restaurants that apply genuine technique and seasonal rigour without the prix-fixe formality or the price tag. Triciclo, on Calle de Santa María in Las Letras, sits in that lower tier and prices accordingly.</p><p>Las Letras is one of central Madrid's more coherent dining neighbourhoods, bookended by the Paseo del Prado to the east and the literary streets around Huertas to the west. The area draws a mix of locals and culturally-oriented visitors who tend to eat purposefully rather than on impulse. Restaurants here survive on repeat custom rather than foot-traffic, which tends to concentrate quality and filter out the transient. Triciclo fits that pattern.</p><h2>The Booking Reality at This Price Point</h2><p>One of the counterintuitive facts about Madrid dining is that the city's most approachable restaurants can be harder to book than its starred ones. High-profile tasting-menu counters like <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/paco-roncero-madrid-restaurant">Paco Roncero (Creative)</a> operate with structured reservation systems and clearly publicised booking windows. Mid-range Michelin-recognised addresses occupy a different position: local demand is high, tables are fewer than at casual trattorias, and the venue's profile falls into a zone where online visibility is strong but reservation infrastructure can lag behind. At Triciclo, reservations are essential.</p><p>The restaurant operates Tuesday through Saturday for both lunch (1 to 4 pm) and dinner (8 to 11 pm), and adds Monday service across the same hours. Sunday is a full closure. That Monday availability is worth knowing: it is a slot that rarely fills as fast as the mid-week or weekend sittings and offers the same menu with meaningfully easier access.</p><p>Triciclo's Google rating of 4.3 across over two thousand reviews indicates steady satisfaction. At this price point, that kind of score carries real information: diners are returning, recommending, and rating favourably over an extended period rather than reacting to novelty.</p><h2>Format and Menu Architecture</h2><p>The kitchen team of Javier Goya, Javier Mayor, and David Alfonso has structured the menu around flexibility rather than prescription. This is a meaningful design choice. In the upper tier of Madrid creative dining, restaurants set the terms: a single tasting menu, a fixed number of courses, occasionally a short supplementary option. Triciclo inverts this. The à la carte allows half portions and even one-third portions, which effectively turns the menu into a sharing format regardless of whether the table intends it that way. For a two-person dinner, this means the range of dishes accessible in a single sitting is considerably wider than at a restaurant where portions are fixed and covers are priced accordingly.</p><p>Alongside the à la carte, the kitchen runs several set menu formats: a Festival of Classics menu, a Seasonal Tasting menu, a Bar menu, and a Weekly menu. Each format targets a different dining intent. The Bar menu works for a shorter commitment; the Seasonal Tasting extends the experience into a more structured progression. Having both available on the same service means Triciclo functions differently for different visitors, which is a practical asset when booking for a group with mixed preferences.</p><p>The stated approach to cuisine draws on seasonal Spanish produce as the foundation, with deliberate cross-references to Peruvian and Japanese culinary traditions. This is not fusion in the blunt sense: the kitchen's framing is about flavour logic and technique borrowed with precision, not novelty layered onto a base.</p><h2>Where Triciclo Sits in the Wider Spanish Context</h2><p>Spain's restaurant conversation at the upper end runs through addresses like <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/el-celler-de-can-roca-girona-restaurant">El Celler de Can Roca in Girona</a>, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/disfrutar-barcelona-restaurant">Disfrutar in Barcelona</a>, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/arzak-san-sebastian-restaurant">Arzak in San Sebastián</a>, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/quique-dacosta-denia-restaurant">Quique Dacosta in Dénia</a>, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/azurmendi-larrabetzu-restaurant">Azurmendi in Larrabetzu</a>, and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/aponiente-el-puerto-de-santa-maria-restaurant">Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María</a>. These are multi-starred destinations that require significant planning, travel in some cases, and a correspondingly serious financial commitment. Within Madrid specifically, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/dstage-madrid-restaurant">DSTAgE</a> and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/deessa-madrid-restaurant">Deessa</a> represent the city's current starred ambitions. Triciclo does not operate at that level and does not position itself there. What it shares with those restaurants is a common commitment to ingredient quality and a willingness to articulate a culinary point of view. The difference is scale, formality, and access.</p><p>For context on the regional creative-modern Spanish tradition more broadly, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/ricard-camarena-valencia-restaurant">Ricard Camarena in València</a> and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/restaurants/casa-marcial-arriondas-restaurant">Casa Marcial in Arriondas</a> both operate as destination-level addresses for modern Spanish cooking rooted in terroir and seasonal produce. Triciclo shares that orientation in its stated philosophy but operates in a neighbourhood context, at a fraction of the price, and without the destination-dining expectation those addresses carry.</p><h2>Planning Your Visit</h2><table><thead><tr><th>Factor</th><th>Triciclo</th><th>Deessa</th><th>DSTAgE</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Price tier</td><td>€€</td><td>€€€€</td><td>€€€€</td></tr><tr><td>Michelin recognition</td><td>Plate (2024, 2025)</td><td>Starred</td><td>Starred</td></tr><tr><td>Menu format</td><td>À la carte + multiple set menus</td><td>Tasting menu</td><td>Tasting menu</td></tr><tr><td>Recommended booking lead time</td><td>Several days to 1 week+</td><td>Weeks to months</td><td>Weeks to months</td></tr><tr><td>Sunday service</td><td>Closed</td><td>Check directly</td><td>Check directly</td></tr><tr><td>Monday service</td><td>Open (lunch + dinner)</td><td>Check directly</td><td>Check directly</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Triciclo's address is Calle de Santa María 28, in the Centro district at postcode 28014. The neighbourhood is well-served by public transport, and the Las Letras area is walkable from major hotels in the Sol and Prado corridors.</p>
The chef associated with Triciclo is Javier Goya, Javier Mayor, David Alfonso.
Triciclo has received recognition including: This essential restaurant in the Las Letras district, now run by chef Javier Goya, was born with the idea of answering the question: what type of restaurant would we like to eat in? The result is this modest, minimalist-style eatery with a ….
The menu is structured to reward lateral ordering rather than a single main course. Triciclo offers half-portions and even one-third portions across its à la carte, which means the most productive approach is to build a personal tasting across several dishes. The kitchen works from seasonal produce with reference points in both Peruvian and Japanese culinary traditions alongside Spanish foundations, so dishes tend to vary by visit. The set menus, ranging from the Festival of Classics to the Seasonal Tasting and Bar formats, provide a pre-curated route through the kitchen's current thinking if you'd rather let the team set the pace.
Pricing at Triciclo is listed as €€.
Hours at Triciclo: Hours: Monday 1–4 pm, 8–11 pm Tuesday 1–4 pm, 8–11 pm Wednesday 1–4 pm, 8–11 pm Thursday 1–4 pm, 8–11 pm Friday 1–4 pm, 8–11 pm Saturday 1–4 pm, 8–11 pm Sunday Closed.
Calle de Sta. María, 28, Centro, 28014 Madrid, Spain
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