300 Years of Flavor: The Secrets Behind the Oldest Restaurant
How did the oldest restaurant in the Western world manage to stay open for 300 years?
People have been eating out in restaurants and bars for hundreds of years, and some of those early establishments are still open today. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Botin, located in the heart of the Spanish capital Madrid, is the oldest restaurant in the world.
Botin opened in 1725, making the restaurant older than the United States itself, the Napoleonic Wars, and even James Watt’s steam engine!!!
The Antonio Gonzalez Gomez family has been running it since 1922.
He believes that the secret to its success lies in creating a warm, welcoming, and charming atmosphere where “people go to restaurants to be with other people and to connect, so a restaurant is not just a place to deliver food and drink. It is a place where people gather moments.” Of course, if the BBC came and watched Khan El-Khalil Street in Egypt, you would find the oldest spoon in a local coffee shop that is almost 1,000 years old, not 300 years old.
