Our new website: everything you need to know before booking
Our new website is now live at elinvernaderorestaurante.com, and it has been built entirely in English for the person we most often welcome through the door: someone who has travelled to Madrid and wants to know, before booking, exactly what dinner at El Invernadero involves. The previous site tried to serve two languages at once from the same address. This one does one thing properly instead.
Why we decided to start again
Most of the questions that reach us by email are not about cooking. They are about practical matters: which nights we serve, whether there is a lunch service, what happens if someone in the party does not eat meat, how far in advance a table should be booked. Those are fair questions, and until now the answers were scattered or buried. A restaurant that only serves tasting menus, with fixed sittings and a fairly narrow set of rules, needs a website that states those rules plainly. That was the brief we gave ourselves.
The second reason is simpler. Visitors from all over the world make up a large share of our dining room, and the English version of our old site was a secondary layer of a Spanish one. It did not reflect the house. Now the English site lives on its own domain, with its own pages, and the Spanish version has moved to elinvernaderoderodrigodelacalle.com. Both are linked from the footer and the language selector, page to page, so nobody ends up stranded on a homepage they did not ask for.
What you will find on the new site
The structure is deliberately short. Every section exists because someone has asked us about it:
The four tasting menus. Vegetalia, Vegetalia Experience, Gastrobotánica and Gastrobotánica Experience, each with its price per guest, on their own page. There is no à la carte menu here and there never has been.
Table booking. Reservations run through CoverManager, and the booking page explains the sittings and what to tell us when you book.
Green Experience gift cards. Our own gift card, for anyone who wants to give dinner rather than book it.
The house story. Who Rodrigo de la Calle is, what gastrobotánica means as a discipline, and why the vegetable sits at the centre of everything we serve.
Contact and opening hours. Address in Ponzano, telephone, email and the exact days and times we serve. Nothing hidden behind a form.
We have not written long essays on any of these. Each has its own page, and each page says what it needs to say and stops.
The distinctions, stated once and clearly
We have held a MICHELIN Star since 2011, and we also hold a MICHELIN Green Star for sustainability, which is a separate distinction and not an upgrade of the first one. Guests often assume the two are the same thing, so the site now explains the difference. Add to that two Soles from the Guía Repsol and the title of Best Vegetable Restaurant in the World, held since 2024. We prefer to list these once, accurately, and then talk about the food.
The points we most needed to make clear
There are four things the old site did not communicate well, and they cost us and our guests real inconvenience.
First: we are not a vegan-only restaurant. Vegetalia is vegetable cooking and can be served fully vegan or vegetarian, but only if you tell us when you book. Gastrobotánica is an omnivorous menu with meat, fish and shellfish, and it cannot be adapted. Getting this wrong at the table is a bad evening for everyone, so the menu pages now spell it out.
Second: we do not serve lunch during the week. From Tuesday to Friday at midday the same premises operate as Barbecho Bar, a different project with its own menu and its own booking system. Dinner at El Invernadero runs Tuesday to Saturday and public holidays, in two sittings, at 19:00 and 21:30. Lunch is Saturdays and public holidays only, at 14:00.
Third: there is no à la carte. Only tasting menus.
Fourth: we do not host private events, and we do not do catering or delivery. We are a dining room, and that is the whole of it.
What comes next
The site will keep growing, mostly with the things guests ask us for: more detail on the wine pairings, on allergen handling, and on the seasonal turns each menu takes through the year. If something you were looking for is not there yet, write to us at reservas@elinvernaderorestaurante.com or call +34 628 93 93 67, and we will add it. In the meantime, the table is easier to book than it was last week, and that was the point.