Beyond the stewed vegetables and the bonito taco, the kitchen also runs sautéed zucchini with fried potato and egg, and a stewed quail alongside the rest of the traditional Castilian card. A separate seasonal menu changes with what the suppliers bring: game, mushrooms, Castilian pulses, Sahagún leeks and truffle in autumn, then pichón, Tudela asparagus, Barbate red tuna and Palencia peas as the year turns.

The Fierro-Pedrosa family came down from Palencia to open Villoldo at Calle Lagasca 134, where sisters Pilar and Mercedes Pedrosa run it. The aim is good traditional cooking in a warm, simple room, with service that is professional and close. It won the Academia Madrileña de Gastronomía's Premio a la Cocina Regional en Madrid in 2022, and holds one Sol in the Guía Repsol.

Villoldo is named after the Palencia village of about 335 people where Anselmo Pedrosa opened the hotel-restaurant Estrella del Bajo Carrión in 1975. His three daughters, Mercedes, Paula and Pilar, and their families invested €1.2 million in a major refurbishment, and then the 2012 crisis cut the village business's turnover by 45 percent. In July 2013 they came to Madrid, provisionally, to earn money for the hotel, at a time when hardly anyone was opening restaurants in the city.

They found a small semi-basement on Calle Lagasca with a light well and whitewashed brick and fitted it out for 32 diners. The plan was to stay four or five years and go home, but Pilar Pedrosa has said she's happy in Madrid with a very loyal clientele, and she now goes back and forth between the village and the city. The family has since added DNorte, a more informal concept in Madrid, and three more restaurants in Palencia.

Much of the produce comes from the family's one-hectare vegetable garden on the banks of the river in Villoldo and from a chosen group of growers; Pedrosa jokes that buying 'kilómetro cero' is simply what village cooks have always done. The menestra is made with more than seven vegetables, each cooked separately. Every autumn she roasts close to 3,000 kilos of four-lobed red peppers over holm-oak wood, which keeps them on the carta all year.

The white viuda beans from the Vega de Saldaña, a historic dish of the Palencia house, cook for about four hours: buttery, skinless beans are left to hydrate over the heat without boiling for about two hours, then finished with olive oil, a secret majada and pimentón de la Vera. The fish comes from Santander's market, which the family has worked with from the start, the lechazo is Churra lamb from Paredes de Nava, and the free-range suckling pig is organically reared. Game follows the calendar, quail in August and September, partridge in October and mallard at the end of that month. Desserts are made in house and all come with an ice cream; there are no cakes, because Pedrosa believes a meal like this should end with something fresh.

The carta is classic Castile. Starters include house croquettes (€12), foie gras cooked in a cloth (€21), León IGP cecina (€23), a salad of house-jarred bonito del norte (€19), a menestra of seven to nine seasonal vegetables (€20) and red peppers roasted over holm oak (€17). Pulses are a speciality: white viuda beans (€16) and beans from Saldaña with wild mushrooms (€18). Fish runs to hook-caught hake (€32), confit cod (€28) and chipirones in their ink (€28), and the meat side is where Villoldo is strongest, with half-roasted shoulder of lechazo (€35), fried churra lamb chops (€27), braised shanks (€25), battered sweetbreads (€24), low-temperature suckling pig (€30), stuffed pig's trotters (€27) and nest-raised squab either in Castilian escabeche or braised (€32).

Seasonal produce drives the specials: game, wild mushrooms, Castilian pulses, Sahagún leeks and truffle in autumn; borage, cardoon, artichokes and big game in winter; squab, Tudela asparagus, Barbate red tuna and Palencia peas in spring; and small game, Palencia tomatoes and courgettes, bonito and anchovy in summer.

Villoldo's two set menus are sold only as gift experiences, bought online and then booked with the voucher code. The Menú Clásicos de la Casa, at €70, runs from an aperitif through the vegetable menestra, wood-roasted peppers, scrambled wild mushrooms with foie, Saldaña white beans and fried Cantabrian hake to roast lechazo shoulder and a sheep's-cheese ice cream, with bread, water and table service included but wine extra, for two to ten guests. The Menú Productos de Temporada is four starters, a fish, a meat and a dessert, decided each day by what the suppliers bring in.

Villoldo serves lunch Monday to Saturday from 13:30 to 16:00 and dinner Thursday to Saturday from 20:30 to 23:00. It is closed on Sundays and public holidays, and in August. Book online through its site or call +34 910 224 552. There are private dining rooms, and dishes can be ordered for delivery or collection.