World’s oldest restaurant in Madrid faces challenge as nearby tavern eyes Guinness record
The owners of Casa Pedro in Madrid say it is older than Guinness World Record holder Sobrino de Botín. But can they prove it?
In the heart of Spain’s capital, Sobrino de Botín holds a coveted Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest restaurant. Exactly 300 years after it opened its doors, Botín welcomes droves of daily visitors hungry for Castilian fare with a side of history.
But on the outskirts of Madrid, far from the souvenir shops and tourist sites, a rustic tavern named Casa Pedro makes a bold claim.
Its owners assert the establishment endured not just the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the Napoleonic invasion in the early 1800s, but even the War of Spanish Succession at the start of the 18th century – a lineage that would make Casa Pedro older than Botín and a strong contender for the title.
“It’s really frustrating when you say, ‘Yes, we’ve been around since 1702,’ but … you can’t prove it,” says manager and eighth-generation proprietor Irene Guiñales. “If you look at the restaurant’s logo, it says ‘Casa Pedro, since 1702’, so we said, ‘Damn it, let’s try to prove it.’”
Guiñales, 51, remembers her grandfather swearing by Casa Pedro’s age, but she was aware that decades-old hearsay from a proud old-timer would not be enough to prove it. Her family hired a historian and has so far turned up documents dating the restaurant’s operations to at least 1750.