The Best Asturian Restaurants in Madrid: Where to Eat Real Fabada and Poured Cider

Photo: Deeliver / Unsplash

Little Asturias, hiding in plain sight in Madrid

You don't need to drive north on the A-6 or cross the Pajares mountain pass to taste Asturias. Push open the door of an old-school sidrería anywhere in central Madrid, and the wooden counter, the smell of fermented apple and a steaming bowl of fabada will do the travelling for you.

Since the 1960s, thousands of Asturians moved to the capital looking for work, and they brought their recipes with them. That "Asturian colony" still runs dozens of family-owned restaurants where cachopo, fabada and hand-poured cider are served with exactly the same reverence you'd find in Oviedo or Gijón.

This guide rounds up where to eat properly Asturian food in Madrid: verified restaurants with real addresses, real history, and the dish each one does best — so you know exactly where to go and what to order once you're there.

📌 Fun Fact: in December 2024, UNESCO declared Asturian cider culture an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing not just the drink itself but the entire social ritual built around it.

This isn't a generic "top 10" pulled from a ranking algorithm. It's a shortlist of places worth the trip, each with the context you need to walk in knowing what to expect.

Asturias sits on Spain's northern coast, wedged between the Cantabrian Sea and the Picos de Europa mountains — a wet, green region that couldn't be more different from Madrid's dry plateau. That contrast is exactly why its food translates so well here: heavy, comforting dishes built for cold, humid winters land differently, and just as satisfyingly, on a chilly Madrid evening.

Fabada: the stew that doesn't tolerate shortcuts

Fabada starts and ends with the beans. It has to be the faba de La Granja, thin-skinned and butter-soft, simmered gently with compango — chorizo, morcilla (blood sausage) and pork shoulder. No pressure cooker, no rushing, if you want to do it properly.

Over in Malasaña, Casa Hortensia has spent decades defending one of Madrid's most award-winning fabadas, made by chef Adela Besteiro. It's close to a mandatory stop on any Asturian food crawl in the capital, and the meal usually closes with an Asturian-style tortilla and a rice pudding many locals consider the city's best.

In Tetuán, La Guisandera de Piñera, run by chef Pedro Martino, serves a reference-quality fabada alongside Asturian-style tripe and verdinas with seafood — a finer, greener bean that swaps in for the classic faba.

💡 Local Tip: always ask for the compango served on the side if you want to control how much chorizo and morcilla go into your bowl — the more traditional sidrerías tend to serve it that way, on a separate plate.

At Casa Lastra Sidrería, another Asturian classic in Madrid, fabada shares the menu with pote asturiano (a version made with cabbage instead of pure beans) and lesser-known dishes like hake in cider sauce or braised partridge. It's the kind of place where the menu barely changes from one decade to the next — and in traditional cooking, that's a good sign.

Fabada was never meant to be a light dish. It was built to fuel miners and dockworkers through long shifts in cold, damp conditions, which explains the generous portions and the compango's assertive, smoky flavor. Ordering it in Madrid on a weekday afternoon, with no plans immediately after, is the most honest way to experience it.

The beans themselves, by the way, aren't native to Asturias at all — like most legumes eaten in Spain today, they arrived from the Americas after 1492 and took so well to the region's damp valleys that they became its defining crop. Faba Asturiana now carries its own Protected Geographical Indication, which guarantees the beans on your plate in Madrid genuinely come from those valleys. If you enjoy heavyweight regional stews, our piece on cocido madrileño makes a good companion read — the capital's own answer to a one-pot classic.

Cachopo and cheese: the other great chapter

If fabada is the definitive spoon dish, cachopo is Asturian cooking's more recent, most viral moment. Two beef fillets stuffed with ham and cheese, breaded and fried, in versions ranging from a normal dinner-plate size to nearly a metre long, built for sharing.

Cachopo actually has a fairly precise birthday: it's credited to cook Olvido Álvarez at Bar Pelayo in Oviedo, back in the 1940s, who took inspiration from cordon bleu and the Spanish san jacobo to create a version filled with ham, cheese and asparagus. Every restaurant has defended its own take on the filling ever since, from the classic combo to versions with pixín (monkfish) or smoked cheese.

Hermanos Ordás, in the Guindalera neighborhood (Salamanca district), has been open since 1959 and remains a benchmark: its cachopo was recognized as one of Madrid's best in a 2016 competition, and the menu also includes escalopes in cabrales sauce and hake in cider.

Near Retiro park, on Calle Menorca, Couzapín takes a more modern approach to Asturian cooking: alongside the classic cachopo, it serves an Asturian cheese risotto and cabrales croquettes — two dishes that show just how far the tradition can stretch without losing its identity.

📌 Fun Fact: Cabrales cheese, with Protected Designation of Origin status since 1981, ages for two to four months in natural caves in the Picos de Europa, where humidity sits around 90% and temperature stays between 8 and 12°C — exactly the conditions the mould needs to produce those blue veins.

Beyond cachopo, it's worth saving room for Asturian cheeses served on their own, with a little quince paste or walnuts. Cabrales, Afuega'l Pitu and Gamonéu offer contrasts you rarely find outside a specialist sidrería, and several restaurants — Couzapín included — now build entire fusion dishes around them without losing their character.

The combination of a hefty cachopo and an intensely flavored blue cheese explains why most of these restaurants recommend sharing a table and ordering several dishes among a group, more in the spirit of a long northern-style sobremesa than a quick weekday lunch.

Escanciar: why cider gets poured from way up high

Nothing captures Asturian culture quite like watching a waiter raise a bottle above their head and let a thin stream fall onto a glass held down at hip height. That technique, called escanciar, isn't showmanship for its own sake: breaking the stream against the glass aerates the cider and releases the natural carbonation from fermentation — something this drink, unlike cava or beer, doesn't come with straight from the bottle.

The Asturian bottle even has a distinctive shape, nicknamed the "pierna de dama" (lady's leg), with a curved neck that lets the pourer control how fast the stream falls. That curve isn't decorative — it's what gives an experienced escanciador precise control over how hard the cider hits the glass.

The result is drunk in one go, in what's called a culín: a small portion meant to be finished before the fizz dies down. That's why a sidrería never fills your glass to the top, and why it's common to toss the small leftover at the bottom of the glass before pouring the next round.

Casa Mingo, right by the Temple of Debod and the Manzanares river, opened in 1888 and still runs almost exactly as it did then: roast chicken, salad and natural cider, with escanciar as part of the show. It's arguably Madrid's most photographed Asturian address, and its oldest — a rare case of a restaurant that has crossed three different centuries without changing its core menu.

💡 Local Tip: if pouring your own cider feels intimidating, don't worry — at most of these sidrerías, the waiter does it for you every round. If you do want to try, hold the glass low, roughly at knee height, and tilt it slightly so the stream hits the side of the glass, not the bottom.

Over in Cuatro Caminos, Sidrería Balmori — right where Bravo Murillo meets Maudes — pairs traditional pouring with potatoes in cabrales sauce, chorizo cooked in cider and stone-grilled beef loin, in a loud, unmistakably castizo setting that fills up every weekend. The culín ritual has a cousin in another very Madrid tradition: if you like short rounds of drinks bar-hopping through the city, check out our route through tap vermouth in Madrid, another Sunday classic that shares more of this spirit than you'd think.

In Lavapiés, Casa de Asturias, open since 1999, works as a restaurant, cocktail bar and sidrería all at once, serving fabada, wild mushrooms with cabrales and chopped churrasco in an unpretentious neighborhood setting, well off the tourist trail.

Restaurant	Area	Specialty	Vibe
Casa Hortensia	Malasaña	Award-winning fabada	Classic, family-run
Hermanos Ordás	Guindalera (Salamanca)	Cachopo since 1959	Traditional
Couzapín	Retiro (Calle Menorca)	Modern Asturian cooking	Contemporary
Casa Mingo	By the Manzanares river	Roast chicken and cider since 1888	Historic sidrería
Sidrería Balmori	Cuatro Caminos	Chorizo in cider	Lively, castizo
Casa de Asturias	Lavapiés	Fabada and churrasco	Neighborhood, no-frills

Planning your own Asturian crawl through Madrid

With these six spots spread across Malasaña, Salamanca, Retiro, Cuatro Caminos, Lavapiés and the Manzanares riverside, there's no need to stick to a single neighborhood — Asturian cooking in Madrid is scattered across the whole city, and that's part of what makes it fun to explore.

A few practical pointers before you go:

• Book ahead on weekends, especially for Casa Mingo and Hermanos Ordás, where queues are the norm.

• Share plates: both cachopo and fabada are built for splitting, not a solo lunch.

• Order a culín, not a full glass: that's the correct way to drink poured cider, and it's how the fizz stays alive.

• Ask what cheese the house uses: not every restaurant serves Cabrales — some work with Afuega'l Pitu or Gamonéu, equally worth trying.

• Save room for dessert: creamy rice pudding and Asturian-style filloas make a fitting end to a meal this hearty.

• Go on a weekday if you can: the most popular spots, like Casa Mingo or Hermanos Ordás, fill up fast on weekend lunchtimes.

Budget-wise, a full meal with fabada or cachopo, cider and dessert usually runs between 25 and 40 euros per person at most of these places — a fraction of what a trip to Asturias itself would cost, minus the green mountain views of the Picos de Europa, admittedly.

If a plate of fabada and a couple of culines leave you in the mood to keep exploring the city on foot, with the same appetite for history and neighborhood flavor, our Cul.Tour Madrid: Famous Landmarks Walking Tour winds through El Madrid de los Austrias, mixing heritage, local stories and the same kind of century-old taverns — the very spirit that keeps these sidrerías packed a century and a half later. Many of them, including El Ñeru right in the historic center, share a street with the centennial taverns of Madrid we've covered before, so you can easily combine both routes in one afternoon. And if this is your first time exploring Madrid's bar culture, our ultimate guide to tapas tours gives you the context you need before heading out.