The world's oldest restaurant, roasting suckling pig on the Calle de Cuchilleros since 1725 — and the setting of the last meal in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
The building is older than the restaurant. Botín's own history dates evidence of the house to 1590, and has a French cook named Jean Botín and his Asturian wife working in Madrid for a nobleman of the court before any of it became an inn. The restaurant proper begins in 1725, when a nephew of Botín's wife, Cándido Remis, opened a small inn on the street.
Through the nineteenth century it ran as a casa de comidas, an eating house rather than a restaurant in the modern sense. The González family took it over at the start of the twentieth century and still hold it. By the restaurant's own account the business was small when they arrived — seven employees, counting the couple and their three children. That is roughly the establishment Ernest Hemingway would have walked into.
One story is repeated more than any other: that a teenage Goya washed dishes here in 1765, before the painting worked out. It reached the Guinness Book of Records in its 1987 edition and the restaurant still tells it. No document supports it.
The Guinness record is narrower than the phrase "oldest restaurant in the world" suggests, and the distinction is worth keeping. What it certifies is documented continuous service under the same name at the same address. Older eating houses exist; what they lack is the paperwork.
The lunch arrives late in the book and a long way from the fiesta. Jake has come to Madrid because Brett wired for him, and the meal is the last thing the two of them do together before the taxi. Hemingway spends more words on what Jake eats and drinks than on what either of them says, which is the point of the scene.
The dish is cochinillo asado, the Castilian roast: a milk-fed piglet, slow-roasted in the wood oven until the skin crisps. It is not pulled pork, not porchetta, and not a whole animal roasted over a fire at a festival. Hemingway does not say how it arrived at the table, so whether Jake and Brett were served portions or a joint is not something the novel settles.
Rioja alta is a Spanish wine, and the name is a region rather than a producer: the higher, cooler, western end of the Rioja valley, in the north of the country. It works the way burgundy does. Hemingway records what kind of wine reached the table and nothing more, which is how he handles the pig as well.
Yes — this is the one meal in the novel that survives intact at the address where it was eaten. Botín still lists cochinillo asado as a house speciality alongside roast lamb, and still roasts in the wood oven; the piglets come from Segovia. The restaurant marked its three hundredth year in 2025.
What should not be claimed is that it is the same plate. A century of kitchens, suppliers, regulation and service sits between Hemingway's lunch and the current menu. The tradition is continuous; the recipe is not documented as unchanged.
We lunched up-stairs at Botin’s. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja alta.
Chapter XIX — the last meal, with Brett in Madrid
We lunched up-stairs 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.
Botín's still serves the suckling pig today — Guinness calls it the world's oldest restaurant, and this passage hangs in its stairwell.
From The Sun Also RisesThe earliest evidence the restaurant cites for the house on Cuchilleros.
Cándido Remis, a nephew of Jean Botín's wife, opens a small inn on the street.
The date the Goya dishwashing story attaches itself to. Undocumented, and still told.
The González family take over. Seven employees, by the restaurant's own account.
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises, which sets its final meal in the upstairs room.
Three hundred years on the same street, marked with an anniversary menu.
Yes. Botín is still open at Calle de Cuchilleros 17 and still serves cochinillo asado, with rioja — the roast suckling pig that Jake Barnes orders in chapter XIX, the final chapter of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. It is the only meal in the novel that survives at the address where it was eaten. The tradition is continuous, though the restaurant does not document the recipe as unchanged since 1925.
It holds the Guinness record, but on a specific criterion: documented continuous service under the same name at the same address since 1725. Older eating houses exist — Le Procope in Paris dates itself to 1686, Bianyifang in Beijing to 1416 — and Casa Pedro, a few miles away in Madrid, claims 1702. What Botín has that they do not is the unbroken paper trail.
A milk-fed piglet, slow-roasted in a wood-fired oven until the skin crisps and the meat stays tender. It is the Castilian roast, and Botín's piglets come from the Segovia region. It is not pulled pork, porchetta, or an adult pig roasted over a fire.
He knew the restaurant and gave it the closing scene of The Sun Also Rises, where the narration calls it one of the best restaurants in the world. The restaurant frames the passage on its stairwell. That the dining rooms served him is treated as established; a particular table is not.
Calle de Cuchilleros 17, in the old centre of Madrid, on the steep street that runs down from the Arco de Cuchilleros at the south-west corner of the Plaza Mayor. The dining rooms occupy four floors of the house.
The restaurant tells the story that a teenage Goya washed dishes there in 1765, and it appeared in the 1987 edition of the Guinness Book of Records. No document supports it. It is house legend, repeated for long enough to be mistaken for record.
Setting of the story
The last meal: roast young suckling pig and rioja alta in the upstairs room, before the final taxi ride and the book's closing line.
Ernest Hemingway wrote about Restaurante Botín in The Sun Also Rises.
The Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
