The experience begins in the subterranean wine cellar—home to some 400 labels and nearly 2,000 bottles—where guests sip vermouth cocktails and watch Temiño prepare appetizers such as a traditional suckling-lamb skewer with candied red pepper and a pâté en croûte that gives the French classic a Burgos twist, incorporating ear, snout, foie, blood sausage, dried apricots, and pistachios. After touring the open kitchen and the meat-maturation room, guests are seated in the dining rooms—formerly a hostel for pilgrims— and treated to two different tasting menus. A highlight is the suckling lamb, served in two courses: first, a suckling-lamb “royal” with a liquid salad (blended lettuce and tomato hearts); second, 15-day aged lamb loin served with textures of beetroot, sorrel, and a reduced lamb rib sauce.
Pushed out of Madrid by gentrification, chef Anaí Meléndez returned to her hometown of Nava del Rey (population 2,000), in Valladolid, to launch a restaurant centered on charcoal grills and local produce. The soaring dining room is punk-meets-ecclesiastical: dark walls, exposed masonry, chains hanging like church arches, pops of blood-red, and a large golden disc evocative of a reredos (the ornamented screen behind an altar). It’s an irreverent, free-spirited setting for tender cuts cooked over embers, such as lamb lashed to a cross-shaped stake and turned on a spit for five hours, or traditional dishes with a twist, like pardina lentils with pickled partridge. The wine list is a highlight, featuring only producers from Castile and León, 95% of which are small, family-run wineries specializing in low-intervention bottles.
Despite being just off the A-6—the highway linking Madrid with Galicia via Castile and León—the Castilian hamlet of Pobladura del Valle has never attracted its share of travelers. Then, in 2024—and at the age of just 23—chef Pablo Gonález launched this elevated tavern restaurant on the edge of town, luring VIP guests like Madrid regional leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso and even catching the attention of the Michelin Guide.
For Gonález, who trained at the Basque Culinary Center and worked at some of the region’s Michelin-starred kitchens, the food of Castile y Leon comes down to “intense, honest flavors,” he says. In his kitchen, these flavors are achieved through sustainably-sourced ingredients, including game from Tierra de Campos, wine from El Bierzo, the mushrooms of Sanabria, the cheese of Zamora, and the trout of León. “It’s cooking without artifice, with respect for the people who work the land and care for the animals,” he says. Pull up a seat in the warm, inviting dining room—decorated with farm tools, a pitched wooden ceiling, and a crackling fireplace—and tuck into Leonese-style black pudding with pine nuts and Reinette apples, duck micuit with fig jam, and confit pig’s ear with a sun-dried tomato and mussel salsa brava.