The oldest restaurants in the world
Gastronomy is an art. But not everyone is –or is born– an artist. The culinary art has been transmitted and evolved from generation to generation since time immemorial.
An art cultivated and pampered over low heat in kitchens around the world, and served at restaurant tables, beginning that ritual that we will never deny: the good eating
Food is something inherent to travel and knowing the gastronomic culture of each country It means opening the doors to a fascinating and tastiest universe.
And so as not to get lost in the culinary globe, NetCredit has made a new series of exquisite maps collecting the oldest restaurants in the world.
Thus, we can discover the oldest restaurant in (almost) all countries. Do you know which is the oldest in the world? And from Spain? Keep reading!
THE TEN OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN THE WORLD
The oldest restaurant in the world is in Austria and goes by the name of St. Peter Stifts Kulinarium. It was founded no less than in the year 803 and his specialty is tafelspitz , a dish based on boiled meat with chopped apple and horseradish.
The second oldest restaurant in the world is Wurstkuchl (dating from the year 1146), in the German city of Regensburg, whose star dish is grilled sausages with sauerkraut.
The bronze medal for the longest lived goes to The Old House (1147), in Llangynwyd (Wales, United Kingdom), where they serve their famous Old House Pie, a potato and pea pie.
They complete the ranking Ma Yu Ching's Bucket (Chinese, 1153), The Brazen Head (Ireland, 1198), La Couronne (France, 1345), The Sheep Heid Inn (Scotland, 1360), Hotel Gasthof Lowen (Liechtenstein, 1380), Honke Owariya (Japan, 1465) and Gostilna Gastuz (Slovenia, 1467).
THE OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN EUROPE
From the list of the ten oldest restaurants in the world, no less than eight of them are European, being St. Peter Stifts Kulinarium, in Salzburg (Austria) , the oldest restaurant in Europe (and the world).
Its first trace is found in a poem by Alcuin of York, in the year 803. It could also be the only restaurant that he had as clients both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Clint Eastwood.
The Stifts Kulinarium opened its doors as an inn within St. Peter's Abbey and today it offers haute cuisine that is a true celebration of Austrian tradition.
The oldest restaurants in Europe
The oldest restaurant in our neighboring Portugal is located in Lisbon's Praça do Comércio and is the Café Martinho Da Arcada (1778), famous for its cream cakes.
To visit the oldest restaurant in France, we will have to go to the region of Normandy , in whose capital, Rouen, is La Couronne (1345). His speciality? La Tour d'Argent or blood duck.
The La Campana restaurant, for its part, is the oldest in Rome and in all of Italy, it dates back to 1528. As a recommendation, despite being in the country of pasta, ask for roast pork.
BOTIN'S NEPHEW, SINCE 1725
The oldest restaurant in Spain is in Madrid and it is none other than the famous Sobrino de Botín, founded in 1725, when the French chef Jean Botín arrived in Madrid together with his wife of Asturian origin with the intention of working for some nobleman of the Austrian Court.
Candido Remis, a nephew of Botín's wife, opened a small inn on Calle Cuchilleros and carried out a reform on the ground floor of the building.
They say that back in 1765 a teenager named Francisco de Goya was washing dishes at Sobrino de Botín. And by the way, the original wood oven is still in use today.
Currently the business is run by the third generation of the González family –Antonio, José and Carlos– and their most popular dish is, of course, the pig.
The Sobrino de Botín restaurant, the oldest in the world
THE OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN NORTH AMERICA
A local pirate named William Mayes founded in Newport, Rhode Island the oldest restaurant in North America in 1673 and he named it: The White Horse Tavern.
The premises became a meeting place for the General Assembly of the Colony and the Criminal Court and Mayes's son followed in his father's footsteps in both the piracy and hospitality businesses.
Members of the Mayes family ran the restaurant for more than 200 years and his specialty continues to be beef Wellington.
The oldest restaurants in North America
Skipping over to Canada, we find L'Auberge Saint-Gabriel, in Montreal, which was the first tavern on the continent to receive a liquor license, in 1754.
Cornish hen is the specialty, served with vin jaune (yellow wine) sauce and grilled vegetables.
Going forward in time to the 19th century and down into southern North and Central America we find one of Hemingway's favorites, El Floridita (Havana, 1817), the Hosteria de Santo Domingo (Mexico City, 1860) and the Café Coca Cola, (Panama, 1875).
THE OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN SOUTH AMERICA
La Puerta Falsa, located in an old colonial house in Bogotá, is the oldest restaurant in South America. and it has capacity for only 20 people, distributed in the bar area and in the discreet wooden mezzanine.
Inaugurated in 1816, The False Door started out as a hole in the wall serving street food –like its famous tamales– to passers-by.
The oldest restaurants in South America
Also from the 19th century the oldest restaurant in Argentina, baptized in 1860 as El Imparcial (Buenos Aires), hoping no one would spoil the mood by talking about politics or religion.
And still in the same century we find the San Agustín Ice Cream Parlor (Ecuador, 1858), the Torres Confectionery (Chile, 1879), the Brazilian Café (Uruguay, 1877), the Leite Restaurant (Brazil, 1882), and the San Roque Bar (Paraguay, 1900).
THE OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA
If you visit the restaurant Aşçı Bacaksız, in Afyonkarahisar, Turkey, You will be greeted by a member of the family who will escort you to a table that is over 100 years old.
Aşçı Bacaksı has passed from generation to generation since 1840 and here, obviously, it is essential to ask for the lamb kebab.
The oldest restaurants in the Middle East and Central Asia
In Jordan , the oldest restaurant dates back to 1932, its specialty is fish and it is called Hostel.
In Kuwait, Edmond Barakat opened a cafeteria for the staff of a car company in 1953 which soon became a popular destination for the general public.
The name of the restaurant changed from Alghanim Mess to More Alghanim In 1987 and today, the children and grandchildren of Barakat run this place whose star dessert is the umm ali (sweet cake).
THE OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN AFRICA
The oldest restaurant that the NetCredit team was able to identify in Africa is El M'Rabet, in Tunisia founded by the minister Ali Thabit around 1630 as part of the Zaytouna Mosque.
The M'Rabet has extraordinary views of the bustling and historic Jemâa Ezzitouna market and their specialty is lamb.
In Cairo, El Fishawy, also known as the cafe of mirrors, hides among the knickknacks, fabrics and jewels of the Khan el Khalili bazaar. Its walls, which are more than 200 years old, have seen a multitude of intellectuals, writers and characters taken from The Thousand and One Nights pass through there.
In 1832, a British settler named Thomas Hartley opened the Bathurst Inn in South Africa, which was hugely successful thanks to Hartley's wife, Sarah, who took over after the death of her husband.
A British Royal Air Force unit, missing their local UK pub, he later renamed it the Pig & Whistle Inn and his current menu of meat pies is inspired by traditional English pub grub.
The oldest restaurants in Africa
THE OLDEST RESTAURANTS IN THE REST OF ASIA AND OCEANIA
Ma Yu Ching opened what is now China's oldest restaurant in 1153 in Nanjing . Her descendant, Ma Youren, brought traditional Ma sauce to the family's ancestral home, in Kaifeng (in the south), in 1864, reopening as Ma Yu Ching's Bucket Chicken House. And yes, her specialty is chicken.
In Kyoto, Japan, she opened the Honke Owariya confectionery in 1465, and from 1700 he started serving the famous soba noodles, previously only made by Zen monks.
Owariya stepped in when the temples could no longer meet the demand and later, the restaurant was designated as "supplier of soba noodles for the Imperial Palace".
The oldest restaurants in the rest of Asia and Oceania
They also date from the 19th century. Leopold Cafe (Bombay), Tek Heng (Bangkok), Tiffin Room (Singapore), Cha Ca La Vong 14 (Ha Noi), New Toho Food Center (Manila), and The Gables (New Zealand).
The oldest in Australia? Grossi Florentino, founded in 1928 in Melbourne. Order oysters – and pasta, of course.
METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES
To make the maps, the NetCredit team searched websites, forums and dining guides to identify the oldest restaurants which are still active today.
“To create these maps, we looked for the 'oldest restaurant in [country].' If we did not find any results, we looked for the capital of that country and in cases where we could not find any matches, We are also looking for other cities within the country to make sure that we explore all avenues”, they comment from NetCredit.
"If we still didn't find anything, we were looking for reviews on TripAdvisor and other similar sites to find information from people who were talking about historical restaurants”, keep going. In case no reliable information could be found, they mark the country as "no data".
They also looked for the oldest cafe or bar and they used words translated into the relevant language of the country in question. In some cases, contacted business owners directly to find out when they were founded and thus verify the information.
“To look for special dishes, first we looked if each restaurant included a special dish or on its website. If it didn't include any, we'd search for "[the restaurant's] signature dish" to see if we could find any new articles about the restaurant,” they continue.
Finally, if the above did not produce results either, they searched for reviews on TripAdvisor to find the most popular dish.
Thus, the investigation led them to develop the most accurate list possible. How hungry we just suddenly entered!