Mediterranean, seasonal and ingredient-led, cocina de mercado that changes with what the market offers, with a creative streak rather than a straight traditional line. There's a Menú Degustación and a wine cellar of more than 100 references.

Gala is a small restaurant on Calle Espronceda, in the castizo part of Chamberí, and since it opened in 1989 it has kept the same identity: elaborate cocina de mercado, where the quality of the ingredients and the care in cooking them show in every dish. Chef Pablo Lozano runs the stoves. It has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand for eight consecutive years, from 2018 to 2025, and keeps it in the current guide. Guía Repsol also recommends it.

The cooking depends entirely on the day's produce, and the carta is renewed each season. The summer 2026 carta opens with bites by the piece, scallop, sea urchin, duck foie, bluefin tuna and spider-crab tartare, 00 anchovy and a Sanabria-style matanza croquette (€3), then Ibérico presa, Russian salad, Galician mussels, Astorga cecina and Dakhla octopus in full or half portions. Fish runs to Balfegó bluefin tuna belly and loin, wild red snapper, black cod, hook-caught baby squid and wild meagre; meat to Nebraska Angus presa, Rubia Gallega sirloin, a Sanabria-style beef rib and roe-deer loin. For the table there is king crab, XXL langoustine from the grill and a 45-day-aged Alistana-Sanabresa beef chop at €75 per kilo.

The bites come by the piece at €5.50 to €8, the starters at €15 to €18 a portion or €9 to €12 a half, and most fish and meat mains at €25 to €28. Other dishes on the summer 2026 carta include a Bresse pigeon served in two passes, the breast grilled with a pâté of its livers and the thighs in tempura, and a brioche of Ibérico jowl with 10 g of Osetra caviar (€29). The Menú Gala at €47 brings three starters to share, a fish or meat main and dessert or coffee, and there's a €3.75 table service charge covering the appetiser, olive oil, butter and sweets.

One dish has survived every seasonal rewrite. The hand-cut beef sirloin steak tartare (€25) sits on the carta with the note that after 35 years it hasn't changed, and it's one of the plates the house is best known for. The seasoning is finished at the table, in front of the diner, and in 2023 it was still often Serafín Losada doing it himself. Bluefin tuna is the other long-running strength: Balfegó tuna shows up as smoked belly, as a loin in a Wellington of Joselito Ibérico jowl and as a chuletón carpaccio of loin, tarantelo and belly.

Losada's home district runs all through the menu. The croquette is a Sanabria-style matanza croquette, made with the house's own cecina, ham and chorizo, and the steaks come from the Alistana-Sanabresa breed: a 45-day-aged chop at €75 per kilo, and a Sanabria beef rib cooked for 36 hours at low temperature and glazed in its juices. Dakhla octopus comes with Zamora chorizo. When the autumn mushroom menu ran in 2023, its dessert was called Otoño dulce en Sanabria, sweet autumn in Sanabria, with caramelised mushrooms, boletus and chestnut ice cream and red fruit.

Gala is known for its seasonal menus, and the autumn mushroom one is the standout. In 2023 it reached its 26th edition, the XXVI jornadas de las setas, at €55 with wine included, a Ternario I 2019 garnacha tintorera that Raúl Pérez makes in Almansa. That year's run went from a focaccia with autumn-mushroom butter and a mushroom flan with wild caramel, through thistle mushrooms with boletus shavings, wok-sautéed boletus with pesto and burrata, and turbot with root-vegetable cream and a black-trumpet meunière, to milk-fed lamb rack stuffed with chanterelles. Drought that year cut the supply of early mushrooms such as the oronja, Amanita caesarea, which had to come off the menu. A winter game menu follows the mushrooms, and alongside the seasonal menus there are two more permanent ones, a long and a short.

The seasonal tasting menu changes each season as a walk through the kitchen's favourite dishes. The summer 2026 version (€60, VAT included) ran from a seafood salpicón and smoked rose butter through a tomato tartare from the house's own garden, acevichado Balfegó tuna, pheasant royal in escabeche and marinated bonito to Angus presa carpaccio with foie, finishing with watermelon tataki, with a Cría Cuervos Verdejo included. There is also a Menú Gala at €47. The cellar holds more than 100 references of red, white, rosé and sparkling wines. The list isn't especially long but it's varied and original; in 2023 it included a Ballad white Garnacha from Cariñena and La Maldición, a Madrid red from the Malvar grape. Much of the carta also comes in half portions, which helps keep the bill in check.

Gala is open Tuesday to Saturday, 13:30 to 15:30 and 20:30 to 23:00, and is closed on Sunday and Monday. Book through the reservation page on its site, call +34 914 422 244, or email info@restaurantegala.com. The entrance is wheelchair accessible.