The house signature is cocido madrileño, the Madrid stew, served with a homemade tomato sauce on the side. The attached shop runs sweet and savoury counters, and a street-level take-away serves its consommé to walk with.

Around 1880 the decorator Rafael Guerrero, father of the actress María Guerrero, who had trained in Paris and worked for Empress Eugénie at the Tuileries, gave Lhardy its Second Empire look: the Cuban-mahogany facade, the shop with two facing counters and the mirror at the back above the console with its bouilloire. The dining rooms, the Salón Isabelino, Salón Blanco and Salón Japonés, keep their period wallpaper and fireplaces, and the newer rooms are named Sarasate, Gayarre and Tamberlick after musician friends of the family.

The Salón Japonés keeps the most secrets: it was General Primo de Rivera's favourite room for private meetings, and by contrast the appointment of Niceto Alcalá Zamora as president of the Republic was decided there. Isabel II slipped out of the palace to dine here around 1847, Alfonso XII came incognito, and the house claims to have been the first establishment in Madrid where women could go unaccompanied.

Lhardy considers itself the first Spanish restaurant in the modern sense, with fixed prices, written menus and separate tables introduced by Emilio Lhardy. In 1885 it installed a telephone when Madrid had just 49 subscribers, and the same year began serving self-service consommé from a silver samovar, still a house ritual. It opened the first Parador, at Gredos, staffing it for its first couple of years, and lent its silver candelabra and served the buffet for the premiere of Tosca at the Teatro Real in 1900.

The carta mixes historic dishes with newer ones: the cocido, croquetas, beef Wellington and the soufflé alongside a sole Evaristo in Champagne and veal escalopes with Stroganoff sauce. The cocido, at €68, is a full ritual, with noodle soup, Brunete chickpeas from the group's own farm, vegetables from Carabaña, León chorizo, Arán valley morcilla, truffled longaniza, Galician beef and marrow, Iberian ham, ropa vieja and house pickles, finished with the Lhardy soufflé. Other classics include the 'most famous callos in Madrid', a centenary Rossini poached egg and a canetón duck finished in the room. At the bar, the Lhardy media combinación is the house aperitif.