Classic French bistro cooking, traditional rather than experimental: the recipes del Río and García Marinelli grew up missing, cooked with care.

Beyond the carta there are two set menus. The Menu Découverte, €65 and served to the whole table, runs from an Emmental gougère with smoked egg yolk and a salt-cod brandade tartlet to house duck foie gras mi-cuit, roast leeks with smoked-eel vinaigrette and crab ravioli in bouillabaisse, then duck magret with honey, spices and sour-cherry sauce or sea bass flambéed with sauce vierge, and a Grand Marnier soufflé to finish. The weekday menu du jour, €36, offers onion soup or pâté de campagne, entrecôte with chips and Café de Paris or pepper sauce, or salmon en papillote, a course of cheeses from Amelie, and crème brûlée or chocolate mousse.

Le Bistroman Atelier is the shared dream of Miguel Ángel García Marinelli and chef Stéphane del Río Brossier, two friends of French origin who wanted to bring a piece of France to Madrid. They opened it in 2019 on Calle de la Amnistía, in the Madrid de los Austrias between the Palacio Real and the Teatro Real, as a small bistro in the style of a French atelier that pays homage to their roots.

It is recommended in the Michelin Guide, won its first Repsol Sol in 2021 and was among the 16 restaurants to gain a second Sol in 2024. It has also won the Premios Metrópoli award for best foreign-cuisine restaurant and the ABC Salsa de Chiles jury prize for best international restaurant.

García Marinelli, a Premio Nacional de Gastronomía winner, trained at the hospitality school in Toulouse and in hotels on the Côte d'Azur, and has spent more than 25 years in Spain creating and running restaurants; the group also runs Le Bistroman Original, Chez Marinelli, Le Japonais, Funky Chen and Hotbao. Del Río, an agronomist by training, learned at Salvador Gallego's school and has cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens in Spain and France, including time with Michel Guérard and preparing the Bocuse d'Or alongside Mario Sandoval.

The cooking is classic French bistro food, traditional rather than experimental, and most starters come as a full or half portion. The September 2026 carta opens with Poget Normandy oysters (€6.50 each), pâté de campagne, house foie gras mi-cuit (with an optional half-glass of 30-year Palo Cortado), salmon gravlax terrine, onion soup, snails in parsley butter, a cheese soufflé and frogs' legs in garlic cream. Fish and shellfish include sea bass flambéed to order, scallops with morels, crab ravioli in bouillabaisse and skate in black butter. Meats run from steak tartare (€32) and beef fillet with Café de Paris butter (€45) to wood-pigeon pithivier (€46), duck magret with honey and spices, and a house duck confit with bigarade sauce. Signature dishes also include Mont Royal pigeon and a bouchée à la reine, and some specialities are made to order.

The list opens with a Coco Chanel line about only drinking Champagne when in love and when not, and it means it: the bubbles run from a Crémant de Bourgogne at €34 through growers such as Georges Laval, Jules Brochet and Ponsart to Krug Grande Cuvée, Dom Pérignon 2013, Pol Roger's Sir Winston Churchill and Jacques Selosse's Initial, at €473 the top of the list. The still wines are overwhelmingly French, arranged region by region, the Loire (up to Didier Dagueneau's Silex), Burgundy, Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon, Provence, Beaujolais, Bordeaux and the South-West, with a shorter Spanish section and a by-the-glass list across Champagne, white, rosé and red.

After dinner the French theme carries on into the digestifs: Cognac and Armagnac, Marc de Champagne, a Provençal pear eau-de-vie with the fruit inside the bottle, Pays d'Auge Calvados, green Chartreuse and a Burgundy-aged blended malt from Michel Couvreur.

Interior designer Javier Erlanz styled the room in the Provençal manner: exposed brick, copper pans, braided garlic and chandeliers over upholstered seating. It is quiet, cosy and elegant, with a curated playlist beneath the conversation.

Le Bistroman Atelier is open every day, 13:30 to 15:30 and 20:30 to 22:30, staying open until 22:45 on opera nights at the Teatro Real next door. Book through the reservations page on its site, by phone on 914 47 27 13, or by WhatsApp.