In 2008, the phrase “echar la persiana” – literally, lower the blind, or close shop – came back into Madrid’s everyday conversation. Spending was shrinking and restaurant eating, which had become a way of life when democracy returned, fell dramatically. By the time economic depression began to lift six years later, over a thousand of the capital’s restaurants had lowered their clattering metal blinds for the last time.

Yet in those same years, say some younger chefs, the city’s native 21st-century food style was born.

“Rents were so low that our generation could finally set up our own kitchens,” explains Javier Goya laconically. Publicity-shy – the antithesis of Mohican-crested madrileño Dabiz Muñoz, the city’s go-to food-face, currently Best Chef in the World – Javier is a powerful insider influence in Madrid’s food scene. In 2013, he and two friends, all with glowing résumés in Michelin-starred kitchens but with no capital, rented two cheap narrow adjacent spaces in a street behind Herzog & de Meuron’s iconic Caixa Forum art gallery.

A New Native Cuisine

Linking the spaces at the back, stripping off plaster to beams, they opened the restaurant with three zingy seasonal menus – called market, a rural walk, and world – plus fine wines by the glass. TriCiclo, as they called the restaurant, was born! Once the loans were paid off, a nearby restaurant threatened with closure asked for their help … then another, and so on, until today they have six in the neighbourhood, each with its own character, plus a gastro-kiosk repairing cycle punctures in the Casa de Campo park. They share Madrid’s signature food style today: modern, unfussy, relaxed and wide-horizoned.