La La Landa
A brief history of Landa, a favorite roadside stop of Audrey Hepburn and King Juan Carlos and the first hotel in the world to reject Relais & Châteaux
One of the things I love about living in Spain is how relatively undiscovered it is. Sure, there are places completely overrun with tourists, but there are still plenty of hidden corners and locals-only spots, too.
Enter Landa.
I was scrolling on Instagram one day when I came across a photo of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful pool I’d ever seen, with colonnaded ceilings, ornate glass windows, and a spiral stone staircase with trefoil motifs running down its banisters. I clicked the geo-tag and landed on a page that looked as though it belonged to a moody food stylist: heart-shaped palmera de hojaldre, rustic loaves of bread, necklaces of chorizo hanging from candelabras. What was this place?
I opened a browser and started digging around. The more I read about the iconic roadside restaurant turned hotel on the outskirts of Burgos, the more incredulous I was: How had I never heard about Landa in all my years as a travel writer/editor?
Founded in 1959 by the madrileño lawyer Jesús Landa and his Burgos-born wife Carmela Vicente, the modest restaurant was set up on a potato field next to the A-1 highway, one of the major north-south arteries of Spain. Jesús’s father, Escolásico, was a national hospitality legend, having served as the head chef at the prestigious Puerta de Hierro Club (the most exclusive members-only club in Spain), where King Alfonso XIII was among the frequent visitors. Escolásico also opened Madrid’s legendary La Gran Taberna (now shuttered), a popular gathering place for intellectuals and politicians until the late ‘70s.
Despite the family’s culinary bona fides, the Landa restaurant became famous for a humble dish of fried eggs with morcilla (blood sausage). It wasn’t long before VIPs like Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, and King Juan Carlos started streaming in to try the crowd-pleasing plate along with other Landa family classics such as vaca a la moda, chicken demi-glace, and shrimp croquettes.
And while you wouldn’t associate a roadside restaurant with specialty alcoholic beverages, you couldn’t go to Landa and not try their signature Champagne cocktail, made with various liquors and designed by the iconic Spanish barman Pedo (Perico) Chicote—a friend of the Landa family—whose Bar Chicote on Madrid’s Gran Vía was a hotspot for celebs like Ava Gardner, Lola Flores, and Ernest Hemingway.
In 1964, Jesús inaugurated a hotel inside a 14th century tower that he moved from the nearby town of Albillos to the Landa property, where he rebuilt it stone by stone. (“I bought a castle,” Jesús told his wife in a conversation recounted by their daughter, Victoria, now the property’s sole owner. “And I’m the Vatican,” Carmela quipped back.) Two years later, Landa debuted a spacious new dining room and 37 guest rooms dreamed up by leading Spanish interior designer Pascuga Ortega, decorator to the royals.
While the vibe of the restaurant is very taberna de carretera, with its wooden beams and taxidermy, the rest of the property leans more aristocratic—four-poster beds, clawfoot tubs, floral wallpaper in shades of blush and dove grey. But it’s soulful, too: Carmela was an artist and a collector of antiques, and many of the property’s furnishings have been sourced from across Spain, including a large communal table from the Convento de Santa Clara in Palma, Mallorca.
Over the years, the property’s distinctive style and classic hospitality has won over distinguished guests including Audrey Hepburn, who resided at the hotel while her husband Mel Ferrer shot the 1966 flick “El Greco.” It has also attracted its share of gourmands—and not just because of its famous eggs and sausage dish.
In 1975, Landa’s culinary team traveled to Lyon, where they spent a few days with the acclaimed French chef Paul Bocuse, learning to make his signature of truffle soup V.G.E. Today, the dish—a decadent combination of consommé, leek, celery and carrot matignon, foie gras micuit, chicken, egg, truffle under a puff pastry dome—is a Landa staple; all new hires learn to make it precisely, following the passed-down instructions to the letter.
Most restaurants and hotels would exploit this celeb-studded history. But Landa believes in marketing the old-fashioned way. Said Victoria in a 2014 interview with El País: “We don’t like to be noticed, our best publicity is to do things right. When we are offered promotional actions, we refuse them. Our cooks and pastry chefs and unknown, we follow the policy of anonymity.” The hotel was also the first in the world to leave the prestigious Relais & Châteaux collection.
For a while after “discovering” Landa, I felt like I was harboring a delicious secret. How many others knew about it??
Then I had lunch with a Spanish-American friend who lives in Madrid. “Have you heard about Landa?” I asked breathlessly, eager to share. “Of course,” he responded plainly, explaining that he’d always stop there for lunch en route to his family’s home in Valle de Mena. “Who hasn’t?!”
