Eximio by Fernando Martín

Where a Cathedral City Meets a Contemporary Kitchen

The streets around Alcalá de Henares' Catedral Magistral are, architecturally, more monument than neighbourhood. This is a city whose medieval university quarter still sets the tone for everything around it. Against that backdrop, a restaurant that takes its name from the cathedral's own ecclesiastical rank, eximio meaning eminent, makes a deliberate territorial statement: this kitchen belongs here, in this city, and it is serious about it. C. Victoria, 2 places the dining room within walking distance of the cathedral, which means guests arriving on foot pass through one of the most historically dense streets in Castile before they sit down.

That physical context matters because contemporary restaurants in mid-sized Spanish cities face a particular challenge: they must compete with the gravitational pull of Madrid, thirty minutes away by Cercanías commuter rail, without replicating it. Restaurants in cities like Alcalá tend to do so by anchoring themselves to place in a way that a capital-city restaurant cannot. Eximio has chosen that path deliberately, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand, awarded in both 2024 and 2025, confirms that the approach is working at a level the guide's inspectors consider worth marking.

Training That Shows in the Technique

The contemporary Spanish restaurant scene has a well-established pipeline: young cooks train at Le Cordon Bleu or a Spanish culinary school, stage at one or more of the country's reference kitchens, and then either move into brigade roles at those establishments or return to their home region to open independently. Fernando Martín followed a version of this path with notable stops: Le Cordon Bleu for foundational technique, and then time at Martin Berasategui in Lasarte-Oria, a three-Michelin-star house in the Basque Country that operates one of the most technically exacting kitchens in Spain.

What that lineage signals to a regular diner is specific: Berasategui's kitchen is not known for conceptual shock or avant-garde theatre. It is known for precision, for the kind of classical underpinning that makes complex plating look inevitable rather than laboured. Chefs who come through that system tend to bring a respect for product quality and a discipline around execution that shows in the consistency of a plate rather than in its novelty. That training, applied to updated traditional Spanish cuisine in a city with its own strong culinary identity, is a useful combination. It explains why Eximio's format prioritises the seasonal tasting menus while keeping an à la carte option open: the kitchen has the range to sustain both.

The Menu Architecture

Spain's Bib Gourmand tier is, among other things, a value signal: the guide awards it to tables where quality exceeds what the price would suggest. At the €€ price range, Eximio sits clearly in that bracket. The menu structure reflects a kitchen thinking about different guest occasions simultaneously. The à la carte gives regulars flexibility and lets the kitchen respond to seasonal availability without committing the whole dining room to a fixed progression. The weekday lunchtime menu is a strong fit for a mid-range restaurant in a heritage city centre.

The two tasting menus, named Corto and Largo, represent the kitchen at its most deliberate. Both change with the seasons, which in Castile means a genuine shift in ingredient profile across the year: spring lamb and white asparagus, summer stone fruit and fresh cheese, autumn game and mushroom, winter legumes and preserved fish. The short format gives guests a structured introduction; the longer menu allows the kitchen to build sequences and explore the regional pantry more fully. The structure itself shows a kitchen confident enough to commit to a point of view.

Where This Sits in the Wider Picture

The Madrid region's dining conversation focuses heavily on the capital, where DiverXO operates. The Bib Gourmand tier across the region is a different conversation entirely, one about accessible quality rather than landmark destination dining. Eximio's position in that tier, in a city that receives visitors primarily for its literary and architectural heritage, makes it the restaurant a traveller to Alcalá is most likely to find rewarding if their priority is technically informed cooking rather than a tapas circuit or a university-quarter café.

For those approaching Spain's contemporary cooking scene from outside the country, useful comparators in the creative-contemporary register include Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona, Ricard Camarena in València, Quique Dacosta in Dénia, Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María, and Atrio in Cáceres. The international contemporary register, for benchmarking purposes, includes César in New York City and Jungsik in Seoul. None of these are direct peers in price or scale, but they map the range of intent within the contemporary cooking category.

Planning Your Visit

Alcalá de Henares is a thirty-minute Cercanías journey from Madrid's Atocha or Chamartín stations, which makes a lunch or dinner at Eximio a viable day-trip addition to a Madrid stay rather than a dedicated overnight. The weekday lunchtime menu makes the midday visit particularly practical: arrive by train mid-morning to walk the university quarter and the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, sit down for lunch at C. Victoria, 2, and return to Madrid by late afternoon. The restaurant's address, C. Victoria, 2, 28802 Alcalá de Henares, places it in the cathedral-adjacent core of the old city, walkable from the main historic sites.