El Corte Inglés restaurant: a 13 euro risotto sparks Madrid debate

The El Corte Inglés restaurant: 13 euros for a risotto that divides opinion

A mushroom risotto with two pieces of blood sausage for 13 euros. A mango and orange juice for 4.50. Service with uniforms, polite without being intrusive, and an extensive menu that —according to those who describe it— does not miccionan the food is garbage. With that menu on the table, the question that has occupied 166 responses for over four years is simple: is the El Corte Inglés restaurant the real banana of Madrid dining or a cemetery for locusts with a tablecloth?

The specific scene that opens the issue takes place in the center of Serrano, the one near the Puerta de Alcalá. Not the one bordering the Villa Magna and the US embassy; that other one is transforming into a space exclusively for super-luxury brands. The first, however, maintains the classic formula: dining room and cafeteria with contained prices, attentive service, and an aesthetic that several describe as stately, patrician, and, above all, paca.

What to eat and how much it costs at the El Corte Inglés restaurant

The economic breakdown is what sustains the bargain thesis. The mushroom risotto with blood sausage, 13 euros. The mango and orange juice, 4.50. A coffee that serves as an improvised office to close deals with partners or colleagues, at a price lower than that of posh or central cafeterias. Some go once a month just to have coffee because they can talk quietly, the temperature is pleasant, and they are comfortable. And there are those who breakfast there daily and describe it as their only vice.

Against that bill, the counteroffer comes with figures from home cooking: the same risotto, prepared at home, costs 1.20 euros. The argument accompanying the data is that no one will have a cook stirring the rice for fifteen or twenty minutes for 13 euros of menu. The discussion, therefore, is not only about price, but about what is paid for exactly: the dish or the time.

The Francoist legacy reformed with modern slate boards

Here the issue gets interesting. One part of the analysis holds that El Corte Inglés is one of the best legacies of Francoism and that its aesthetic —described as ariasnavarresque, with brown furniture, a separate smoking area, and a baguette sandwich— is the heritage of a specific Spain. The reform that introduces modern slate boards and Malasaña vibes is read as a betrayal of that code. The sharpest summary: El Corte Inglés is for orderly people.

The opposing current does not defend the building, but what was inside it. Formerly, the restaurant was a guarantee of eating well in any conflictual square you traveled to, where restaurants were bad or systematically ripped off tourists. The cafeteria, used almost exclusively by ladies, served pancakes and cakes for two pesetas while disastrous places thrived. This is the point that is repeated most: it was not high cuisine; it was a floor of reliable quality.

El Corte Inglés as the embassy of Paco-Madridismo

The most precise description of the atmosphere comes from those who define it as the embassy of Paco-Madridismo, where the Francoist remake of the minor Austrias mixes with the chrome and polished granite tiles of the development era. A place where it seems that at any moment a minister will sit down to dispatch the new development plan. It is not a criticism; it is a description of an era.

That atmosphere has measurable economic consequences. On the roof, where there is one, they take drinks with good views and polite people. And the access filter is the true luxury: to get there you must pass in front of security and go up five floors, which drastically reduces commercial harassment at the door. The tranquility, those who practice it argue, is the product that no one else sells at that price.

Salaries, the data almost no one disputes

Amidst so much irony about the tablecloth, an argument appears that is not refuted: the conditions for employees are better than in almost anywhere else in the sector. In a business where turnover and precariousness are the norm, that detail weighs more than any discussion about decoration. There are also those who point out that the sign prohibiting leaving tips has disappeared after the elbichito lockdowns, and that they are now left normally.

The pessimistic diagnosis is signed by those who describe the company as a glorious and obsolete dinosaur: it only has the facade left; inside it is dead, the last jewel of a Spain that no longer exists, with good taste, decent salaries, and attentive service for a middle class that grew with it and shrank with it. The prognosis is terminal.

Why El Corte Inglés is no longer what it was?

Because the public changed faster than the business. The clientele that sustains those dining rooms today is described as a mix of Asian tourists, civil servants, and locusts, with the traditional middle class in retreat. The service remains; the narrative that justified it, no. And without a narrative, a department store dining room is just a department store dining room.

The disconcerting data remains: the menu is extensive and, contrary to all forecasts, that does not imply the food is bad. The usual logic says that a long menu hides frozen food and haste. Here, for years, it was not so. That is the true asset of the business, and also the only thing that no slate board reform can buy.