El Paraguas

In Salamanca, Madrid's smart and busy quarter, on Calle de Jorge Juan, there is a door you could walk straight past: El Paraguas.

A small Asturian restaurant opened in 2004 by Sandro Silva and Marta Seco. Today there is a six-restaurant group behind it, from Amazónico to Ten Con Ten; in 2016 D.ream, the restaurant arm of Turkey's Doğuş Group, came in as a minority partner and the brands spilled out beyond Madrid. But El Paraguas is still the most local, the most stubborn of them.

The kitchen is not Madrid's, it is Asturias' — the green, rainy region in the north of Spain, facing the Atlantic. A kitchen of butter and stock rather than olive oil: the menu runs from fabada to hake in cider, from Oviedo-style cachopo to sea urchin au gratin, classics of that region from end to end.

We began with the kitchen's gifts — a spoonful of butter on a thin wafer, then a green gazpacho. Then sea urchin baked in its own shell, morels with foie-gras and truffle, and a lasagna with sea urchin caviar over it. At the centre of the evening, though, were the fabes: the big white beans of Asturias, cooked with lobster instead of chorizo, brought to the table in the pot and shared out into the plates there. The broth comes from the lobster. Don't turn your nose up at beans — if you find yourself there, order it.

Dessert is the region's classic again: rice pudding with its top burnt, arroz con leche requemado. A high-end piece of eating in Madrid, and a fine alternative for anyone after a kitchen a little off the usual path.