Best Madrid Cooking Vacations and Culinary Tours in Spain

Whether you want fine dining or tapas, Madrid is full of amazing food to explore, always paired with excellent wines that you can taste as part of our Madrid wine tours. Stop for a churro with rich hot chocolate, a vermouth aperitif, and some tapas, or a gourmet dinner paired with Rioja wines, and you’ll understand why Madrid is a capital of gastronomy.

Madrid is a modern city in that it has all the necessary infrastructure to support its robust tourism market, but it keeps the feel of an old-world city. Your Madrileña culinary guide knows all the best spots for an authentic Madrid experience, allowing you to experience it like a local and not like a tourist. 

 Madrid is a place of stately grandeur, incredible art, and rich gastronomy, known for its elegant boulevards, its impeccably maintained parks, and of course its museums. It’s home to the Royal Palace, as well as the “golden triangle of art”: the Prado Museum (pre-20th-century art), the Reina Sofia (20th-century art), and the Thyssen-Bornemisza (a national collection of historical to contemporary art). You can see some of the world’s most prized masterpieces in this one city, including works by famous Spanish artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, Diego Velàsquez, Joan Mirò, and Salvador Dalí. 

Madrid is also famously the home of the Real Madrid football club, as well as such cultural sites as the National Library, the Royal theater, the Plaza Mayor, the Puerta del Sol, El Retiro Park, and of course numerous churches. The feel of Madrid is that of vibrancy steeped in history, it has an energy about it that compares to the other great capitals of the world.

Your hostess is ready to welcome you to her city, showing you the hidden gems of Madrid, and can easily modify the activities to suit your particular tastes.

Madrid Culinary Tours Details

The region surrounding the capital city is well worth an exploration during any of our gourmet Madrid tours, olive mill visits, hands-on cooking classes featuring regional dishes such as cocido madrileño (a pork stew), bocadillos de calamares (fried squid sandwich), callos a la madrileña (a hearty stew of sausage and offal), tortilla (Spanish omelette), and more. And don’t forget the wonderful wines that you will taste on vineyards near Madrid, many of which feature such famous Spanish varietals as Granache, Tempranillo, and Syrah. 

Some of the communities you can visit outside the capital city are Chinchón, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Alcalà de Henares (birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote), and Aranjuez, each of which offers world and cultural heritage sites of note as well as gastronomic products that make them ideal places to explore on Madrid food tours.