Deessa (Mandarin Oriental Ritz)

Deessa (Mandarin Oriental Ritz) sits in Retiro, and the room reads exactly the way the Madrid dining establishment expects a modern spanish kitchen at this address to read — considered, particular, and exact about the things it cares about. Two-Michelin-star room inside Madrid's most storied hotel.

The cooking turns on signatures the Madrid regulars order without looking at the menu: Tasting Menu, Foie Gras, and Pichón. The kitchen runs at the $$$$ register, with a wine programme that is either deep where the room is loud and tight where the room is quiet, and a service floor that has clearly worked at this register before.

For a impress clients dinner in Madrid, this is one of the addresses you should already know about. Reservations skew very hard; dress is jacket required. The averaged Food/Ambience/Value line sits at 9.2/10 — high enough to mean the room is doing more right than wrong, calibrated against the sharpest other tables in the city.

Two-Michelin-star room inside Madrid's most storied hotel. For a deeper read on this occasion across other cities, the Impress Clients guide is the canonical reference.