Tres por Cuatro

Where the Menu Does the Talking

Calle de Montesa sits on the quieter residential edge of the Goya district, a few blocks south of where Salamanca's boutique density thins out into neighbourhood life. The address puts Tres por Cuatro slightly off the main Serrano-to-Velázquez axis that draws most first-time visitors to the barrio. That deliberateness shows in the crowd and, more to the point, in the menu format that has earned the restaurant Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition in 2024 and 2025.

A Menu Built Around Two Distinct Logics

Madrid's contemporary bistro tier has settled into a fairly predictable format over the past decade: a short seasonal card, a wine list weighted toward natural producers, and a prix-fixe option for lunch. Tres por Cuatro breaks from that template with a structural decision that tells you something specific about what the kitchen is trying to do. The à la carte is divided into two named sections with different functions.

The first, "Los de siempre" (roughly, "the regulars"), anchors the menu with dishes that have become fixtures of the restaurant's identity. The fried torrezno and the ossobuco pibil taco sit here, the kind of plates that earn a restaurant its regulars and that a kitchen refines through repetition rather than reinvention. In the broader context of Spanish contemporary cooking, this section represents a clear editorial position: some dishes are worth keeping, and a rotating menu that erases them to signal seasonal credentials is not always the correct choice.

The second section, "Los de hoy" ("today's"), is where the kitchen responds to the market and the season. This is the more conventional half of the format, but its placement alongside a permanent section changes how you read it. The seasonal dishes aren't performing novelty for its own sake; they're in conversation with a fixed reference point, which gives both halves more definition than either would have alone. This dual-logic structure at a €€ price point is a meaningful departure from the category norm.

Latin American Influence as a Working Method, Not a Theme

Contemporary Spanish cooking has absorbed Latin American technique and ingredient logic at multiple price points, from the elaborate constructions at DiverXO down through mid-market bistros. What varies is how that influence operates: as a concept, as a flavour palette, or as a genuine structural element of the cooking. At Tres por Cuatro, the Mexican and Peruvian references appear as working methods, the pibil preparation on the ossobuco taco being a clear example, where a slow-braised central European cut meets an Yucatecan achiote-and-citrus technique. The result reflects how a Madrid kitchen in the 2020s actually thinks about ingredients and process.

Chef Álex Marugán developed the approach through earlier work at Mercado Torrijos, also in the Goya neighbourhood. That proximity matters less as biography than as context: the Goya-Torrijos axis has become a reference point for the kind of serious-but-informal cooking that Madrid's younger restaurant culture has embraced, and Tres por Cuatro sits firmly within that tradition.

Price, comparable set, and What the Awards Signal

A Michelin Bib Gourmand designation means, by definition, that Michelin's inspectors found the cooking to exceed what the price point would normally predict. Two consecutive years of that recognition (2024 and 2025) suggests the kitchen has maintained a level of consistency that the guide's methodology requires. On Opinionated About Dining's European Casual ranking for 2025, the restaurant appears at position 543, a data point that places it within a large but competitive field of informally positioned restaurants across the continent.

Within Madrid specifically, the relevant comparison is not with the city's starred fine-dining rooms. Coque and Paco Roncero operate at €€€€ with full tasting-menu formats and the production infrastructure those require. Tres por Cuatro's comparable set is better understood as the mid-range contemporary bistros where à la carte remains the dominant format and where the quality ceiling is set by the cook's intelligence rather than the budget for imported luxury product. At that tier, the combination of two Bib Gourmand years and a Google rating of 4.6 across more than 1,100 reviews represents a well-established track record.

For broader context on what Spanish contemporary cooking looks like across different price points and regions, the full range runs from Salamanca bistros through coastal destination restaurants like Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María and Quique Dacosta in Dénia, to the Basque reference points of Arzak in San Sebastián and Azurmendi in Larrabetzu, and the Catalan technical tradition represented by El Celler de Can Roca in Girona and Disfrutar in Barcelona. Similar bistro-level contemporary cooking in other Spanish cities appears at Atelier Casa de Comidas in Granada and Casa Antonio in Jaén.

Planning Your Visit

The Saturday and Sunday closure means weekday lunch is the more relaxed entry point. The Goya Metro stop (Line 4) puts the address within a short walk.