You can eat à la carte in full or half portions, building your own four or five courses, or take the Estaciones tasting menu of eight seasonal dishes that mixes new creations with Saddle classics like solomillo Rossini and Madrid-style callos. The wine list runs to roughly 1,400 to 1,500 references, with champagnes and rare Spanish, French, German and Italian vintages, and two pairings, Estaciones and Non Plus Ultra.

Calle Amador de los Ríos 6 was home to Jockey, founded in 1945 by Clodoaldo Cortés, a hospitality professional trained at the Hotel Ritz. With its English-club feel and its banquettes, Jockey became the place where Madrid's businessmen and politicians did their deals over lunch, and its chef Clemencio Fuentes cooked there for 50 years. It closed in the summer of 2012.

Saddle opened in the same building in autumn 2019, backed by a group of Spanish investors and redesigned by Diego Gronda's studio. The name is a nod to its predecessor, and so is the menu, where the Madrid-style callos are billed as a tribute to Jockey. Saddle won its Michelin star in the 2021 guide and holds two Repsol Soles.

In the summer of 2024 Saddle took its cooking to Mallorca for a season, running a pop-up at the Cap Rocat hotel with a tasting menu that included pâté en croûte, Mediterranean red prawn tartare, smoked eel and a Grand Marnier soufflé. The team on that trip included the restaurant's own fromelier, Genoveva Vizcaíno, a sign of how seriously the cheese course is taken.

Studio Gronda, the practice of the architect Diego Gronda, rebuilt the old Jockey inside out, some 1,600 square metres over two floors, with the aim of making it a social landmark again. The ground floor opens with a lobby screened by large metal doors framed in silk panels, then the main dining room, which seats about 80 under a giant bronze sculpture of a cloud that filters the light from the skylight above. A show kitchen with a custom-built Bonnet range sits on view.

The palette is bronze, white marble on the bars, leather on the walls, wood on the ceilings and lacquered wood doors leading to the private rooms upstairs. The tableware, furniture and carpets were made for the space, and the planting is by the landscape designer Valentine Laperche.

Saddle was set up to bring back the grand à la carte restaurant at a time when serious dining in Spain had come to mean tasting menus only. Most dishes come in full or half portions, so you can build your own four or five courses, and the menu changes once or even twice each season, with off-menu dishes on top.

On the current menu, starters run from €28 for a half portion of zucchini blossom, and mains sit mostly between €55 and €68. Signatures include the veal shank in tribute to Santi Santamaría, Mont Royal squab, Rubia Gallega beef tenderloin, crispy suckling pig, the callos in tribute to Jockey and the Saddle soufflé. A section called the Art of Tableside Service covers dishes finished in the dining room, like the steak tartare (€60) and grilled sole meunière (€68), in a style of service the restaurant describes as closer to the last century.

If you would rather not choose, the Estaciones (Seasons) tasting menu is eight courses of classics and seasonal creations for €185, with an Estaciones wine pairing at €140 or the Non Plus Ultra pairing at €300.

Israel Ramírez runs a list of around 1,400 selections drawn from a cellar of about 9,000 bottles, with more than 50 wines by the glass. Spain is covered in depth, from Rioja houses like López de Heredia, Roda and Artadi to Sherry, Priorat and Ribera del Duero, and the French side reaches Burgundy (Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Coche-Dury, Roumier), Bordeaux (Pétrus, Cheval Blanc, Margaux) and the Rhône, alongside Germany, Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Italy, the US and Canada. The list has held Wine Spectator's Best of Award of Excellence since 2020.

The ground-floor bar is open all day, Monday to Saturday from 13:30 to 00:30, with no reservation needed, which makes it the easiest way into Saddle. Venezuelan bartender Daniel Rengel runs a seasonal menu of reworked classics, such as the Dry Martini served with pomme soufflé, and the back bar holds more than 700 spirits. There is a short food menu with oysters, anchovies, paté en croûte and caviar, plus the Paddock menu, which pairs cocktails with small dishes for €95. The bar has twice won the best restaurant cocktail bar prize at FIBAR, the Valladolid bar fair: first in 2020, under bar director Alberto Fernández, and again in 2024.

The whole upper floor, reached by stairs or a private lift, is given over to private dining rooms. Ascot and Longchamps seat one to four people, Jockey seats four to ten around an imperial table, and Zarzuela seats up to 22 at a single table or splits into two separate rooms. Groups of eight or more book from dedicated group menus.

The chef's table is two tables beside the kitchen pass, for two to four guests each, on Friday and Saturday evenings. It starts with an aperitif in the bar, moves through a kitchen tour and a cocktail, and ends with a tasting menu, for €395 per person including water and coffee.

The restaurant serves lunch Monday to Saturday from 13:30 to 15:00 and dinner from 20:00 to 22:00, and is closed on Sunday. Book through the reservation page on Saddle's own site, by phone or by email; the bar needs no booking. The dress code rules out shorts, sportswear, flip-flops and beachwear, but a suit and tie are not required.