In the heart of Madrid sits a restaurant called Sobrino de Botín. It opened in 1725, and Guinness World Records lists it as the oldest restaurant in the world that has been running without a break. People walked through its doors when the United States didn’t exist yet - and they still walk through them today.
The most amazing thing inside isn’t on the menu. It’s the oven. Botín’s wood-fired oven has been kept lit nonstop for nearly 300 years. Chefs feed it new logs every day, but the fire itself has never been allowed to die out. The same flame that roasted dinners in the 1700s still roasts them now.
The most popular dish has always been cochinillo asado - roast suckling pig. Famous writers have eaten there, including the American author Ernest Hemingway, who liked it so much he wrote about it in one of his novels. A meal at Botín is basically time travel by way of your stomach.
