Traditional Spanish and market cooking. Casquería is the house specialty, with cocido on Thursdays and spoon dishes like alubias, lentejas estofadas and patatas guisadas. The carta changes with the seasons and gets recited to the table as well as printed, and the meat, fish and vegetables are bought daily at the Chamartín and Maravillas markets.

The starters are the counter classics: boquerones in vinegar, the ensaladilla imperial, Ibérico ham croquetas, bocartes albardados of boquerón with anchovy, line-caught squid fried in olive oil, clams with white rice, Gredos snails with Tineo chorizo, pisto manchego, migas with a fried egg, and a potato tortilla topped with callos. The spoon dishes are the heart of it: legumes stewed with their sacramentos (lentils, beans, judiones or fabes), and patatas guisadas with Ibérico rib, conger, squid or wild mushrooms. The Thursday cocido comes with chorizo, onion morcilla, tocino, ham bone, cabbage and chicken. The casquería list is long: veal tongue in sauce, lamb's trotters, sweetbreads a la bilbaína, lamb's brains a la romana, kidneys, calf's liver with onions, bull's criadillas, callos a la madrileña and stewed oxtail, most available as half portions.

Fish runs to hake a la romana, conger in green sauce in the Aranda style, squid in its ink, fried red mullet, baked Marín gallo, salt cod with tomato and hake kokotxas, and from the oven there's roast suckling pig, veal breast and milk-fed kid chops, plus a 30-day aged beef chop for two. Desserts are homemade: sheep's milk cuajada with honey and pine nuts, natillas, rice pudding, raspberries with cream and the house flan. Wine is served 'en primatos', the room is decorated with magnum and Nebuchadnezzar bottles and themed displays that change from time to time, and after the meal comes the sobremesa of conversation, mus, dominoes and a copa, with pasodobles now and then. The house even runs its own mus school and championship.