La Tasquería
Javi Estévez sends out the head of a suckling pig whole, confited and then fried, and it is the plate people photograph.1 Around it he cooks tripe, brains, trotters and cockscombs. The MICHELIN Guide has kept a star on the room since the 2019 edition, and the star followed him across the city when he moved.7
Why go
Estévez learned this cooking from Julio Reoyo at Mesón de Doña Filo in Colmenar de Arroyo. He ran that kitchen from 2010 to 2014, and the specialty was castizo stews.3 Madrid Fusión made him Cocinero Revelación in 2016 for what it called clean technique on the parts nobody else was cooking.3 The menu runs on one idea. Every plate pairs an inside cut with something out of the sea. Pig's tails arrive with eel, trotters with langoustines, veal tendons with cockles, cockscombs with baby squid.2 Estévez on why: "Me ayudan a presentar la casquería de otra forma." They help him show offal another way.2 The callos take two days and the kitchen goes through more than twenty kilos of them a week.3 He moved the whole operation from Salamanca to Chamberí in March 2024 for a bigger kitchen and more room between tables.6
Order this / avoid
- The cabeza de cochinillo, confited, fried and brought out whole. It is the dish the guide singles out of the three menus.1
- The callos, veal tripe with trotter and snout, cooked the way Madrid likes them. Pilar Salas calls them "imprescindibles."3
- The carbonara of squid noodles, where Galician cacheira does the guanciale's job.2
- Avoid the desserts. José Carlos Capel ate them in April 2024 and called them "nada convincentes", none of them convincing.2
- Ask what is off the menu. The bigger swings arrive that way, and cow's udder was one of them.3
What locals & experts say
- José Carlos Capel, in Gastroactitud on 11 April 2024, scored the room 7 out of 10 and did not spare the last course: "El desencanto llega, sin embargo, con los postres, nada convincentes." The disappointment arrives with the desserts, and none of them convinces. He names the lamb-brain flan in particular, "de textura pastosa y sabor anodino."2
- Pilar Salas, writing for 7 Caníbales the year Madrid Fusión named him, on what the room does to sceptics: "la elegancia de su cocina ha hecho que quienes siempre habían visto con repelús unos sesos de cordero acaben relamiéndose."3
- The MICHELIN inspector quotes the house's own brief:
we are specialists in cooking offal, but we do other things as well.
1 - Time Out Madrid, in its February 2025 list of the city's best restaurants:
Javi Estevez is the reason we've all become evangelical about offal, even if we were previously sceptical.
4 - The line at the top of the menu, which Capel prints in full: "Deja tus prejuicios en la puerta y sorpréndete de hasta donde eres capaz de llegar en este viaje." Leave your prejudices at the door.2
Good to know
- Book it. Three tasting menus and nothing else, so the kitchen needs the numbers.1
- Closed Sunday, lunch and dinner the rest of the week.1
- Prices when Capel read them: 59 euros for the shorter menu, 95 for the long one, with a head landing between 70 and 90.2
- The cellar leans on Madrid's own appellation and Marta Hernández runs it.6
- The old Salamanca room still trades as La Barra de la Tasquería, and it is a bistro now.1
- Hygiene: I have not read a Spanish inspection record for this room, so I have nothing to report either way.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "get down with the offal!"
Verdict
should-visit — Book it for lunch and let the shorter menu carry you. The head of suckling pig is the plate to say yes to, and the desserts are the course to skip. Capel scored it a seven and Madrid Fusión made Estévez its revelation of the year. This is a kitchen that cooks offal better than anyone in Madrid and still cannot land a dessert.