This article is part of a guide to Madrid from FT Globetrotter

There is a chain of great seafood cities that girds the earth, from Paris and Brussels, with their fruits de mer, to Tokyo and its sushi, to the ceviche of Lima. Madrid is one of the summits.

Despite being far from the sea, the city has long been obsessed by the products of the deep. Sweet white prawns from Huelva, blood-red tuna from Cádiz, octopus and primeval barnacles from Galicia: these are the foods that punctuate lazy afternoons on the terrazas and pile up on restaurant tables for late-night feasts.

Part of the seafood display at O’Pazo, Madrid: prawns, crabs and oysters around a plate of prawns, all on a bed of ice
Part of the seafood display at O’Pazo, Madrid

The compulsion to eat seafood is such a fundamental part of Madrileños’ psyche that when Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the region’s political boss, defended her family from corruption allegations this year, she felt it necessary to protest: “We don’t spend taxpayers’ money on brothels or shellfish platters.”

Brothels are beyond the scope of this article, but few things in life can impart such an instant (and undeserved) glow of self-satisfaction as a Madrid seafood extravaganza. Because of its central location, the city has serious range when it comes to seafood. You can find Catalonia’s spectacular zarzuela de pescado (a stew that shares its name with a palace and a kind of operetta) as well as Valencia’s ever-present paella de marisco.

But Madrid restaurants largely reflect the traditions of two great seafaring regions: the seafood of Galicia — often boiled — and the fish and crustaceans of Andalucía, typically fried.

It would be unfair to say that Spanish cuisine largely consists of boiling, frying or curing food or just leaving it alone. But it’s hardly a historic miscarriage of justice, because when it comes to seafood in Madrid, the primary materials can be so exquisite that boiling, frying or leaving alone is just about all you need.

Ribeira do Miño

Calle de Santa Brígida 1, 28004 Madrid
  • Good for: More seafood than you suspected existed at prices you barely thought possible

  • Not so good for: Formal dining or indeed any sense of privacy

  • FYI: Combine the €46 seafood platter for two with a €17.50 bottle of Albariño and you’ll hardly need to eat or drink for a week

  • Website; Directions

A group of diners enjoying seafood and wine
A taste of ‘the eternal Spain’: Ribeira do Miño
Octopus on a plate held up by a hand against a yellow wall at Ribeira do Miño
Octopus is one of the restaurant’s many Spanish seafood staples

When you step into Ribeira do Miño, you enter the eternal Spain. Behind the bar lurk piles of crabs, langoustines and goose-necked barnacles. There are two stalwarts long banished from more fashionable places: the fruit machine and the cigarette vending machine. Beyond, in the traditional manner, stretches a seemingly never-ending series of comedores, or dining rooms, decked up in faded nautical gear and usually packed with customers polishing off enormous meals. With the hubbub, and the servers shuttling back and forth, there is something of the ambience of a busy train station.

A seafood platter held by a member of staff at Ribeira do Miño
A seafood platter at Ribeira do Miño: ‘Bliss itself for shellfish grazers’

Then there is the food. There is hake, turbot, sole and cod, octopus and even meat. But the point of the place is the shellfish platter, piled so high that when it arrives you think you’ll never get to the bottom. For some this is too much: too many lifeforms sacrificed for your lunching pleasure, too much of a chore to crunch and winkle your way through. For others it’s a little too low-life. Though there are oysters on the menu, this is demotic seafood, not fine dining. No individual item is the very best that is available. But together they are spectacular, making Ribeira do Miño bliss itself for shellfish grazers like me. And the prices can barely be beaten.

Arahy

Calle de Alcalá 58, 28014 Madrid
  • Good for: You can’t miss the tuna. You just can’t miss the tuna

  • Not so good for: My dining companion thought the decor was rather 1980s. But who cares?

  • FYI: Prices have been moving up at Arahy, as in so many other restaurants: at present it offers €60 and €90 set-price menus. Both, quite rightly, revolve around the tuna

  • Website; Directions

A plate of tuna tartare with truffle and caviar at Arahy
Tuna tartare with truffle and caviar at Arahy
A metal sculpture of a fish head on a table at Arahy
The star of the show at Arahy is very much the tuna

Facing defeat in parliament, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s previous prime minister, decided not to hang around for further humiliation. Instead, he went to Arahy, a restaurant a block from the Parque de El Retiro. There he stayed eight hours as the session of no confidence in his administration lumbered on — and ultimately ejected him from office.

Arahy chef/patron José Raimundo Ynglada in front of a poster of himself
Arahy chef/patron José Raimundo Ynglada

What is not known is whether Rajoy sampled Arahy’s chief delight on that occasion. One can only hope so. Metal sculptures of fish heads bedeck the tables as a cue to diners what to order: the bluefin tuna retrieved off the coast of Murcia by the supplier Ricardo Fuentes. It has to be tasted to be believed. Other things can be noted: the Madrid smart set that frequents Arahy, the delicious white-prawn cannelloni starter occasionally on offer, the cinnamon brioche torrija dessert. But it’s really all about the tuna.

La Gaditana

Calle de la Fuente del Berro 23, 28009 Madrid, and Paseo de la Castellana 56, 28046 Madrid
  • Good for: The poquito de tó (a little of everything) unites fried delicacies of the deep ranging from anchovies to calamar. A caña (glass of beer) is the perfect accompaniment

  • Not so good for: Making your mind up — the menu is eight pages long 

  • FYI The restaurant’s astonishingly soft pulpo a la Gaditana provides impressive competition to the much more famous pulpo a la Gallega

  • Website; Directions

It’s hard to know where to start when it comes to Andaluz fried fish in Madrid. One restaurant that imparts an Andalucían feel from the moment you start nibbling on the olives is Cazorla, with no fewer than eight branches in the city. But it’s hard to beat La Gaditana, which has two branches and whose name refers to Cádiz, the Phoenician-founded city that has sea all around it and unmissable food within.

A waiter clearing a table at La Gaditana
La Gaditana’s name refers to the Andalucían port of Cádiz
 A plate of pink shrimp at La Gaditana
Gamba blanca de Huelva at La Gaditana

The restaurant offers sublime versions of the region’s most unmissable snack, tortillita de camarón — shrimp fritters. Like everything La Gaditana fries, they are crisp, crunchy, not at all greasy: the platonic form of Andaluz fish. There is also more ambitious cuisine. Salads with foams make an appearance, as do confit tomatoes, but when the basics are this good, why do anything else?

O’Pazo

Calle de la Reina Mercedes 20, 28020 Madrid
  • Good for: High-end fish dining against a vaguely ’70s backdrop

  • Not so good for: Swift service. This is a place that screams “long lunch”

  • FYI: The carabinero croquettes combine two Spanish obsessions — giant scarlet shrimps and deep-fried dough balls

  • Website; Directions

Salpicón de mariscos at Galician eatery O’Pazo
Salpicón de mariscos at Galician eatery O’Pazo . . . 
Set tables at Galician eatery O’Pazo
. . . which is the perfect destination for a leisurely lunch

O’Pazo, a Galician restaurant stranded in a semi-anonymous part of northern Madrid, is a kind of seafood et lumière place, with great glassy displays of marine (ex) life and theatrical-style spot-lighting. There are anchovies with an almost melting flavour, a salpicón de mariscos that glistens with freshness, a ceviche mixed to measure at your table. It all slips down nicely with a €25 bottle of Pazo de San Mauro Albariño.

O’Pazo’s head chef Alberto Aguado holding a plate of sole
Sole music: the offerings at O’Pazo ‘glisten with freshness’

Founded in 1969, this is a traditional restaurant, good for power dining. The maître d’ has the air of a long-suffering CEO and the waiters might not grace diners with their presence as often as expected. The prices are not cheap. But what O’Pazo provides is a sense of occasion.

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