Poncio WM

Verdict

This is the right booking if you want Andalucian-influenced contemporary tapas without paying €€€€ for the privilege. The Michelin Plate recognition in 2025 tells you there's genuine kitchen discipline here, not just neighbourhood goodwill. Book it for a relaxed lunch before or after the park, or as a lower-stakes alternative on a trip that's already heavy with fine dining commitments.

About Poncio WM

Poncio WM sits a few metres from the Puerta del Niño Jesús entrance to the Retiro, on Plaza del Niño Jesús 3 in the Retiro district. The location matters: this is a genuinely quiet corner of central Madrid, away from the tourist circuits around the Prado and the Paseo del Arte. For food-focused travellers staying in Salamanca or the wider Retiro area, that proximity is a practical asset rather than a marketing point.

The kitchen runs a contemporary à la carte built around tapas and small plates with a clear Andalucian influence. That Andalucian thread is worth paying attention to: it implies an orientation toward southern Spanish produce, the kind of sourcing decisions that show up in the quality of anchovies, the character of olive oils, the treatment of piparra peppers. These are not dramatic ingredients, but they are ingredients where provenance and handling separate average tapas from something worth seeking out. The gilda on offer here — the classic pintxo combination of olive, anchovy, piparra pepper — is specifically flagged by Michelin as a dish worth ordering. When a Michelin-recognised kitchen calls its own gilda a highlight, that's a sourcing and technique statement as much as a menu decision.

Alongside the à la carte, the restaurant runs two tasting menus: the LQDW Short and the LQDW Long. LQDW stands for Lo Que Diga Willy, What Willy Says, a direct reference to the owner-chef. The naming is deliberately informal, which signals something about the register of the room: this is not a stiff fine-dining operation with ceremony around every course. The format sits between a tapas bar and a restaurant, the tasting menus sit within that same register: structured enough to give you a shaped experience, relaxed enough to stay in the spirit of the space.

The Andalucian influence on a contemporary Madrid menu is a positioning choice that has real implications for what ends up on the plate. Southern Spanish cooking has historically been underrepresented at the serious end of Madrid's restaurant scene, where the prestige often flows toward Basque technique, Catalan creativity, or international reference points. A kitchen drawing on Andalucian sourcing and flavour logic in a Michelin-acknowledged space is doing something with a degree of conviction behind it. For the food-focused traveller who has already eaten through the Basque and Catalan canon at places like Arzak in San Sebastián, Azurmendi in Larrabetzu, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, or Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona, Poncio WM offers a different regional register worth exploring.

The €€ price point puts this comfortably below the city's starred and highly competitive upper tier. You are not paying for spectacle or for a tasting menu that runs to twelve courses and two hours of table service. What you are paying for is carefully sourced ingredients treated with contemporary technique in a room that Michelin describes as quiet and attractive. That is a specific and useful offer, particularly for solo diners, pairs, or anyone who wants quality without the full commitment of a flagship dinner.

For context within Madrid's wider contemporary scene, see Adaly, BANCAL, Desborre, En la Parra, and Ferretería as part of the same mid-range contemporary wave in Madrid. Pearl's full Madrid restaurants guide covers the broader field. If you're planning time around the city more widely, the Madrid hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide are worth checking before you arrive.

If your Spain trip extends beyond Madrid, the comparison points shift considerably. At the starred level, Quique Dacosta in Dénia and Martin Berasategui in Lasarte-Oria operate in a different weight class entirely. Poncio WM is not competing with those rooms. It is competing for the lunch or casual dinner slot on a trip where you already have bigger dinners planned, for that slot it offers genuine value at its price tier. Poncio WM does not carry the demand pressure of Madrid's starred rooms, the Michelin Plate recognition, rather than a star, keeps the reservation queue manageable. For weekend lunch, book a few days in advance to be safe. Weekday visits, particularly lunch, are unlikely to require much forward planning. No specific booking platform or phone number is listed in the available data, so check current reservation availability directly via search or the restaurant's own channels.