Hotel Real Colegiata de San Isidoro Restaurant

The restaurant of the Hotel Real Colegiata de San Isidoro is inside the old monastery, on the Plaza de Santo Martino, in the same complex as the basilica and the Royal Pantheon. The main dining room, the cloister one, stands on the Roman wall and is reached along the cloister corridor. The Academia Leonesa de Gastronomía gave it the Restaurante Leonés 2024 award.

Who cooks

In the kitchen is Marcos Iglesias, a León native trained at the Bilbao Hospitality School, who passed through the Zortziko group, Daniel García's, and was head chef at the Hotel Carlton in Bilbao before returning to León in 2021. In the dining room, the maître Marga Fortes, who has run the restaurant since 2014 after working in London and at the Parador de San Marcos. The cooking is León cuisine brought up to date, with produce from the province and nods from elsewhere.

The menu of the day: €28 with wine

Monday to Friday, at midday and except on public holidays, there is a menu of the day for €28 including VAT. It has a starter, a first course and a main course to choose from several, a spoon dish of the day and dessert, with Baltos red wine (D. O. Bierzo) or Cortes de León 1188 white (D. O. León), water, bread and coffee. It changes every week; in the November week we checked it had grilled Sahagún leek with steak tartare, gnocchi with cured tongue, duck magret and tempura cod, with some dishes carrying a supplement.

The à la carte menu

The menu runs from €15 to €36. To start, Entrepeñas wagyu cecina (€29), confit Bierzo peppers with tuna belly (€18), red prawn croquettes (€15) or glazed pork tongue (€16). Fish: cod (€27), turbot (€28), bluefin tuna (€33) or wild sea bass (€36). Meat: suckling pig (€26), sirloin of beef aged more than sixty days (€31) or tenderloin with foie and morels (€35). At weekends and on public holidays at midday there are rice dishes for two. Bread is charged at €1.50.

Rooms and concert dinners

Besides the dining room, the house has rooms inside the monastery: the Don Fernando, with large windows onto the cloister and space for 32 people, and the Pendón de Baeza room, the old refectory and great hall, used for conferences and special dinners. From June to mid-September the cloister hosts dinners with live music, and at Christmas there are concert lunches and dinners with a set menu, between €69 and €88.

A phone that answers 24 hours

On its website or on 987 87 50 88, which answers 24 hours. You do not need to stay at the hotel.

Before or after, the Royal Pantheon of San Isidoro is in the same building, and the cathedral ten minutes away. If you sleep here, the hotel is above.