La Catapa
La Catapa, a taberna by the Retiro, cooks its mussels Thai-style in red curry and coconut milk.
Why go
The critic Alberto Luchini summed up the place in 2024: Some call it the best bar in Madrid; others a fine enlightened eating house; others the model contemporary taberna. And they are all right.
1 Miguel Ángel Jiménez cooked at El Amparo and El Cenador de Salvador before he left haute cuisine and opened a small bar on Calle Menorca in April 2010. In 2013 he moved it across the street into the bigger room the Laredo wine bar had left, keeping the bar and high tables and adding a dining room of about ten tables.1 Jiménez still directed it in 2025.3
Luchini wrote in March 2024 that the red-curry mussels had a slight kick of heat
and were as addictive as toasted sunflower seeds.
1 He had jamón de mar (sea ham), tuna toro that the house cures and salts itself, sliced as thin as sashimi with pickled onion and cauliflower.1 The callos (Madrid tripe stew) were irreproachable, well bound and very unctuous, the kind that almost seal your lips,
though he wished they were hotter.1 He told readers to look at the case of the day's fish by the bar before sitting down, with Dénia red prawns, turbot and razor clams in it that day.1 Macarena Escrivá of El Español ate in 2018 and found a delicious tortilla, very juicy but not runny.
2
Eat at the bar. Guía Repsol wrote in 2025 that the bar holds much of its appeal,
while the dining-room experience is more uneven, competent but without gastronomic ambition.
3 In 2024 Nicolás Fernández-Trujillo and Pedro Martos ran the room and a cellar led by sherry and the other fortified wines.1 Dabiz Muñoz, the DiverXO chef, said in 2024: It's an informal, humble and seriously flavourful spot. It's probably my favourite spot for tapas and pintxos in the city.
5
Order this / avoid
- Order: the mussels in red curry (Alberto Luchini, 2024).1
- Order: the jamón de mar (Luchini, 2024).1
- Order: the callos (Luchini, 2024).1
- Order: the potato and truffle croquetas, first on Macarena Escrivá's list of the best things in 2018.2
- Order: the tortilla (Escrivá, 2018).2
What locals & experts say
- Alberto Chicote, chef (2024):
Miguel Ángel Jiménez was a classmate at catering school when I started at 17 and fell in love with cooking; I go to see him because he's a friend and you eat very well there.
4 - Macarena Escrivá, El Español (2018): 4.5 out of 5.2
- Award: 1 Sol Guía Repsol, 2021 and 2025.3
Good to know
- Where: Calle de Menorca 14, beside the Retiro.3
- Booking: book a table by phone on 915 74 26 15. In 2018 the bar took no bookings and was usually busy.2
- Price: 35 to 40 euros a head in 2018.2
- Timing: it shut on Sundays in 2018.2
Verdict
could-visit — Go to La Catapa for the curried mussels and the house-cured tuna, and eat them at the counter. In 2025 Guía Repsol put the dining room a step behind the bar.