| At the heart of a brick building on the street of Cuchilleros (“the knifemakers”) in Madrid, a fire burns. It has burned there continuously for 300 years. When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, the fire had already been lit for 83 years. When the Spanish Civil War rocked the streets of Madrid in the 1930s, damaging one of the balconies of the old brick building, the flame smoldered on. Even when all the world was quarantined during COVID-19, the fire in this building continued, quietly, to glow.
The fire in question is the oven flame of the world’s oldest restaurant according to the Guinness World Records—Sobrino de Botín—and it forms the establishment’s flickering heart, a living relic of a lost age, kept constantly alight lest temperature fluctuations cause the antique granite oven to crack. When asked by Smithsonian magazine how the restaurant has kept the flames going for so long, the establishment’s co-owner, Antonio González, replied with Promethean confidence, “We steal the fire from the gods.”
Botín’s oven fire is a fitting emblem of the culinary and cultural traditions that the restaurant has kept alive century after century. Botin’s story intertwines with the richest traditions—and most savory flavors—of European history.
Sobrino de Botín—“Botín’s Nephew”—is the oldest eating establishment in the world to retain the same name, same location, and same hospitable activity without ever closing. Its storied dining rooms and cellars have been the haunts of kings, writers, painters, actors, and even a ghost.
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