Varra cooks contemporary Spanish from seasonal produce, classic castizo tavern food downstairs sitting alongside more contemporary seasonal cooking upstairs. The split is architectural: traditional plates at the street-level bar, more worked cooking in the dining room above.

Varra, on Calle Hermosilla, describes itself by its timelessness: a space beyond eras and fashions that reinterprets the essence of Spanish cooking, with tradition as the starting point and seasonal produce as the star. It is the most personal project of chefs Joaquín Serrano, its founder, and Jorge Velasco. It entered the Michelin Guide in 2024, won a Bib Gourmand in 2025 and keeps it in the current guide, is recommended by the Guía Repsol, and was named best opening of 2024 by the Guía Metrópoli.

The pair met the restaurant business from the consulting side as much as from the stove. Through Salvist they advise restaurants across Spain, and they were behind the success of Mamaquilla among other places. Serrano credits the chefs he worked for with different lessons: Joan Roca's calm under pressure, Diego Guerrero's care for his team and its staff meals, Carlos Oyarbide's Basque finesse and exacting standards, and Ricardo Sanz's way of blending Spanish tradition with Japan while putting product above technique.

Varra is the most personal of their projects. Around it they have grown more informal concepts under the Vrro name, which carry over the tavern classics, the tortilla, croquettes, ensaladilla and red-prawn toast, with a strong wine offer; one opened at Serrano 93 in 2024 and another at Castellana 200 at the end of 2025.

At street level, Varra Fina is a renovated taberna that pays homage to castizo food, casual, lively and often crowded, with plenty of bar soul. On the floor above, Restaurante Varra switches to tablecloths and cloth napkins, and the cooking puts the product and its season first.

Bites come by the piece: Joselito ham croquettes (€2.50), a Gilda with Santoña anchovy, oysters natural or with choricero ponzu, a Galician scallop with gazpachuelo, a red-prawn tosta and an aged-picanha brioche. Plates include a daily-made Russian salad, confit leek with truffle velouté, Varra Fina's pig's ear with brava sauce, almadraba bluefin tuna tartare, an open tortilla with cod kokotxas in pil-pil, baby squid in ink, grilled Ibérico abanico (€22), 40-day-aged pork meatballs and picanha tartare, sea bass with beurre blanc and a 40-day-aged beef chop (€50). Desserts, at €8.50 to €9, include a free-range egg-yolk flan and a caramelised torrija.

Serrano's own picks for a perfect meal here are the red-prawn toast with semi-salted butter, the Russian salad, made fresh every day, with the tuna tartare added as an extra, and the aged-beef and picanha meatballs, finished with a Périgueux sauce of truffle and mushrooms. The tavern downstairs also has stews of the day and off-menu dishes, while upstairs the offer is meant to move more with the market and the season; early menus there ran to fallow deer, hake, confit artichokes and fabes.

Drinking well is part of the idea: Serrano argues that a good bottle shouldn't be kept for a solemn table or an outsized bill, and that a glass of Champagne suits any hour. By the glass there's AT Roca Corpinnat (€9), Thiénot Champagne (€13), Spanish whites and reds from about €4 to €10, and a deep run of fortified wines, from Lustau manzanilla (€5) to Montilla-Moriles from La Inglesa, including a Fino Pasado (€13) and a Palo Cortado (€18). By the bottle, the Champagne list takes in Larmandier-Bernier, Pascal Doquet, Louis Roederer Collection 245 and Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2015 (€360), up to a last bottle of Salon 2013 at €950. Spanish reds lean on Ribera del Duero and Rioja, with Valduero Una Cepa 2020 (€54), 200 Monges Reserva, Viña Tondonia Reserva 2012 (€66), Castillo Ygay 2012 and Pesus 2012, and there's a French page with Burgundy from Louis Latour and Geantet-Pansiot and a Margaux du Château Margaux. When it opened the cellar held more than 140 references, all available by the glass.

Varra serves lunch every day from 13:00 to 16:30, and dinner Sunday to Thursday from 20:00 to 23:00 and Friday and Saturday until 23:30. Book through the reservation link on its site, call +34 616 123 421, or email reservas@varrarestaurante.com.