Dining at Hotel Sobrino de Botin, the oldest in the world ..

After reaching Madrid on 21 May '22, we decided to explore the city. We had heard of Sobrino de Botim, the oldest hotel in the world opened in 1725. There was Guiness book of world records certificate to prove this point without any doubt. We decided to visit this hotel situated in the suburbs of Madrid.

Entrance to Sobrino de Botin

The food is about three times as expensive as ordinary eateries around here, but tasty and very comfortable.  Food is served in high class expensive cutlery.

 

Ernest Hemingway mentions the hotel and its most favourite dish in two of his novels, but the fact that he did write part of a novel here is contested. Roast suckling pig is the most favourite dish here.  

Click here for the Statesman link ..

The Roast suckling pig dish

 

This hotel is situated a little away from the main city, in the old suburbs of Madrid in Cuichelleros area. Though we did not have roast suckling pig, we had some of the tastiest wine. We booked and slot was available only at 10.30 PM. We reached the hotel by 9.30 PM and asked for an empty table and we were taken to a corner table. 

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

All throughout we could internalise the solemnity of the occasion. We were siting in the same building where Spaniards in all their armoury would have waled around and where Nobel laurete Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) also sat and wrote some part of his books.

Quoting from www.botin.es -

The love this charismatic North American felt for Spain is well known to all. Few foreigners have felt and reflected our country’s beauty like he did. He needs just a few lines to evoke a landscape filled with all its scents, shifts of light and harmonies.

A fierce and passionate champion of bullfighting, in 1932 he published “Death in the Afternoon”, a veritable treatise on tauromachy in which he mentions Botín:

“…but in the meantime I preferred to dine on suckling pig at Botín than sit and think about the accidents which my friends could suffer.”

All of us at Hotel Botin

Botín also features in “The sun also rises”. For many years we have been gratified to observe the pilgrimage of American tourists who arrive in search of the dining room in which Hemingway sets the novel’s final scene:

“We lunched upstairs at Botin’s. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja alta. Brett did not eat much. She never ate much. I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles of rioja alta.” 

unquote ...

Enjoying wine ..

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 was awarded to Ernest Miller Hemingway "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."  www.nobelprize.org

 citation from Guinness group

 

By the time we left the Hotel, it was past 11 PM and had to rush back to the hotel lest we miss the sleep and the bus for the next day trip to Toledo, the capital of Spain till 1560. 

 

Though  I wanted to extend some pleasantries with the main chef of the Hotel and thank him for the excellent dish, due to paucity of time, we had to move out. Click here for a small video ..

 

The Botin visit was indeed very memorable. It helped me hold hands with the people who walked in the hotel about 300 years back while it was being started by French cook Jeanne Botin in 1725. The photo of the Guinness World Records citation is the authentic proof of the age of the restaurant.

George ..