Not mine to be clear. While most of you were busy at home roasting and eating a turkey, we had our own big night out to celebrate Cathy’s birthday. Dinner was planned for a respectable Spanish hour, 10:30 p.m. at Casa Botin. (I can hear you shuddering.)

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Casa Botin was founded in 1725. It is the oldest restaurant in the world in continuous operation. The wood oven built then, is still in use today for their 2 specialties: suckling pig and roast lamb.

Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, James Michener, and many Spanish novelists have found their way to Casa Botin, often featuring the restaurant as part of the setting in their books. In 1765, a teenage Goya was employed there as a dishwasher.

We wandered around for a bit, planning to go for a drink before the restaurant. Then we thought, why not have a drink at the restaurant and ask if there is any possibility to eat earlier.

The entrance was easy to find and there were a number of tables outside. However, we had been advised to bypass the sidewalk and main floor tables and ask for seating in the cellar.

We were invited in immediately and shown to a tiny table tucked behind a bar and in very close proximity to a leg of ham that was clearly in the process of being carved up to serve to hungry guests.

We waited about 20 minutes and were shown down the stairs into a cellar room and seated on some rather hard wooden benches and chairs.

The restaurant is spread over 4 floors including down some rickety steps into what used to be storage cellars. (With two engineers at the table, there was a great deal of discussion on how they had managed to wire such an ancient stone building.)

The menu was heavily focused on meat, with some fish including baby eels for 122 Euro, about 3x the next most expensive item on the menu. I did ask Marisa about baby eels and it really is a thing. Baby eels, or “Angulas”, are mild and tender. They are cooked in olive oil with a touch of heat from red peppers. They look like long white noodles. Even though they are not served alive (like other babies I have spoken of recently), the idea was off-putting, even if the cost was not. There is a far less expensive option simply called “Gulas”; Marisa says her family eats them often with eggs. Still a pass for me, even though I do enjoy anago sushi, a piece of a larger salt water eel.

Rick remembers being at Casa Botin in 1978, when he was a poor travelling student. He had the gazpacho, as that was all he could afford at the time. He ordered it again for his first course and it was delicious. The rest of us were feeling the need for some fresh vegetables so ordered the house green salad; cut romaine lettuce, diced tomato and white onion served in a bowl with no dressing other than the 1/2″ of water at the bottom of the bowl that must have been left after the lettuce was washed. It was a bit sad, though I think we ate every bite of the lettuce and tomato. I skipped on the raw onion, not my thing.

Although the salad was disappointing, the house red wine was fabulous. Good thing as it was the only option on the menu other than the house rose and the house white – there was no wine list of any kind.

Our dinners were not light. Rick had the sucking pig which looked very impressive and had been served to every table around us. Ken and I had the lamb and the birthday girl had chicken and vegetables. Other than the bread we ordered, the only other accompaniment was 2 small white potatoes on each plate.

I barely made it through the lamb – forget the potatoes. It was tender and tasty but fatty and well – just too much. Rick said the suckling pig was delicious.

After that very rich meal we bravely decided to share desserts. Ken and Cathy had a piece of carrot cake, gone in moments. Rick and I shared a creme brulee. Delicious!

And… then the cheesecake arrived.

Rick had texted the restaurant in Spanish, asking them to arrange a cake for Cathy. Having never heard back from them, he had reasonably assumed no cake. And yet – there it was. Grandma’s recipe apparently. It was delicious with a baked firm shell and runny cream in the middle. It looked like someone had not left it to set long enough. But man, was it good!

Our waiter arrived seconds later to pour a digestive called Pacharan, a popular aperitive or digestive with an herby aniseed flavour made from blue-black sloe berries. The gentlemen were left to finish mine and Cathy’s as neither one of us really enjoyed the taste. Gotta try though right?

We finally left the restaurant around 11:30, 2 hours after our early start of 9:30. We groaned for most of the walk back to the hotel and were happy to put ourselves to bed quite promptly.

So what did I learn from all of this? Well, don’t be afraid to go to the restaurant early and check if the only reservation you could get was basically the middle of the night. And always, always ask about the state of the cake order.