Pedro Romero

Pedro Romero sits directly opposite the Plaza de Toros — Spain's oldest bullring, opened in 1785 and home of the modern bullfight as Pedro Romero himself codified it. The restaurant is named after that founding matador, and the dining room (white linen, dark wood, walls hung with bullfighting memorabilia and signed photographs of the matadors who have eaten here over the past sixty years) is a temple to the tradition that built Ronda's reputation.

The menu is the Andalusian canon, executed with the technical precision of a kitchen that has been writing the recipes since the mid-twentieth century. Rabo de toro (oxtail braised in red wine) is the order — widely considered the best version in Spain. Carrillada de toro (bull's cheek), gazpacho andaluz, croquetas de jamón, suckling pig from the Sierra de Ronda, and the regional speciality of perdiz a la rondeña (partridge in chocolate-and-almond sauce). The kitchen has the depth to handle a serious wine pairing and the seriousness to never reduce traditional dishes to tourist versions.

The wine cellar leans hard into the Ronda DO — a relatively young Spanish wine region producing seriously good Tempranillo and Petit Verdot — alongside Rioja, Ribera, and a deep Sherry collection. Sommelier Antonio Pérez has been in the dining room for over thirty years and is the unofficial historian of Ronda's wine scene. Service is Andalusian-formal in the old sense, with white-jacketed waiters who treat the menu's traditional dishes with appropriate gravity.

Pedro Romero is the city's anchor restaurant. It does not have a Michelin star, has never tried for one, and exists for a different purpose: to serve the Andalusian repertoire at a level that justifies a long lunch. The room books out for the local feria (the September festival around the bullfight) two months ahead and runs at full capacity through the high tourist season. It is a working dining room, and a beloved one.

Pedro Romero is the long birthday dinner in Ronda — a round table for eight, the rabo de toro production at the centre, a magnum of Sierras de Málaga in the ice bucket, and the kind of slow Andalusian afternoon that only a working dining room of this calibre can sustain. The kitchen handles a celebration dessert with appropriate ceremony, and the dining room treats a long table of family with the warmth that a fifty-year-old institution can.