The impact of the pandemic was inevitably less severe for chefs like Dani García at the Four Seasons Hotel Madrid and Quique Dacosta at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid. Many smaller, independent restaurants in Madrid have struggled to survive the shutdowns, but a few recent openings are noteworthy. Here are our new favorites.

Lakasa

The open kitchen in this sleek dining room creates real intimacy between the chefs and their customers and also makes for fascinating theater. Spain’s Guía Repsol, one of the country’s most respected restaurant guides, says that this is a place to taste things you’ve never heard of or thought of before. Certainly, the menu is intriguingly original. Highlights of a recent dinner were the buñuelitos de queso Idiazabal (Idiazabal cheese fritters), grilled white asparagus with black-garlic cream, Galician clams cooked with garlic and sherry, roast lamb with black-butter sauce and capers, and an astonishingly good crème caramel made with ewe’s milk. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Lakasa
Plaza del Descubridor Diego de Ordás 1. Tel. (34) 91-533-8715