Zaldiko Is the “Oldest” Asador in Pamplona’s Old Town. It Opened in 1988.

Every English language mention of Sidrería Zaldiko in Pamplona calls it a traditional Basque cider house tucked into the old town, and leaves it there. That framing is not wrong, but it flattens a much stranger and more specific story. Zaldiko genuinely is the oldest continuously run asador in the Casco Viejo today. It has held that title only because it opened in 1988, inside a building that had already lived several other lives first, and because everything around it that was older has since closed.

That distinction matters for a specific reason. A visitor told Zaldiko is “historic” will walk in expecting centuries of continuity, the kind of place where the same family has poured cider from the same barrel since before Pamplona had electric light. What they are actually walking into is a 37 year old restaurant, run since day one by a former butcher and his wife, built inside a much older building whose own history has nothing to do with cider or steak at all. Knowing which parts of the place are actually old, and which are not, changes what’s worth paying attention to when you sit down.

This account draws on a detailed 2023 anniversary interview with the restaurant’s owner published by Diario de Noticias de Navarra, the region’s Spanish language paper of record, a 2025 report on the business’s current sale status, the restaurant’s own published information, and the documented route of the encierro itself, which passes directly outside Zaldiko’s door every morning of San Fermín.

The Building Was a Donkey Stable Before It Was a Restaurant

Zaldiko sits at Calle Santo Domingo, 39, on Cuesta de Santo Domingo, the steep opening stretch of the encierro route that runs from the starting corrals up toward the Plaza Consistorial. Long before it served a single chuletón, the space was a stable, where villagers arriving from the surrounding countryside left their donkeys while they did business in the city. The floor was dirt. The mangers were still built into the walls when the current owner, Ángel Molina, first saw the place, and by his own account a spring beneath the building is still there today.

After the stable use ended, a neighbor took over the space to build ox yokes. Then it sat empty for roughly two decades. Molina bought it because it was, in his words, the cheapest property available in Pamplona at the time: 30,000 pesetas, with no running water. He rebuilt it from nothing. The restaurant opened on 24 June 1988, and Molina has run it ever since with his wife, Teyi Fuentes, whose cooking, particularly her ajoarriero de rape, a monkfish and salt cod preparation, gets its own credit in the restaurant’s local reputation.

None of this appears in the English language coverage of Zaldiko, which treats the building as though its only relevant history began the day the restaurant opened. The stable, the yoke workshop, and the twenty empty years are the actual reason Zaldiko can call itself the oldest asador in the neighborhood: everything else on that stretch of street that predates 1988 is gone.

A Butcher Runs the Kitchen’s Most Important Decision

Molina trained as a butcher before opening Zaldiko, working at Carnicería Jesús Fernández in Pamplona, a trade with its own deep roots in the city: Pamplona’s butchers, tied historically to the Mercado de Santo Domingo a few steps away, are documented as the encierro’s first runners. That training still drives how the restaurant sources its signature chuletón. He personally selects cuts from seven regular suppliers across northern Spain, and when local supply doesn’t meet his standard, he travels to Asturias or to Mercamadrid, Madrid’s wholesale meat market, to choose pieces himself rather than order by phone. His reasoning, stated directly in a 2023 interview: phone orders get filled with an uneven mix of good, average, and poor cuts, because no supplier ships you their best pieces without being asked to justify it in person.

He is similarly direct about fraud that runs through the wider Spanish beef trade, including steers castrated too late and passed off as the more prized bueyes, beef stamped “Galician” purely by which slaughterhouse processed it rather than where the animal was raised, and Wagyu or Kobe labeling applied loosely. Zaldiko’s own answer to that problem is transparency about where its meat comes from and how long it’s aged. Molina and a group of friends once ran an informal blind tasting over several consecutive weeks, aging cuts from the same animal to different points and scoring the results, and landed on 30 to 45 days as the window that keeps the meat tender without losing flavor.

The Txotx Tradition, and What “Sidrería” Actually Promises

The word sidrería describes a cider house, the Spanish term for what is called a sagardotegi on the Basque side of the border: a restaurant built around cider served straight from the barrel, or kupela, traditionally poured from a height to aerate it, a ritual known as txotx. Zaldiko markets itself around this tradition and offers a closed sidrería menu alongside its à la carte options: tortilla de bacalao, bacalao con pimientos, chuletón grilled over coals, txistorra, and a queso con membrillo dessert to close the meal, the same core structure found at sidrerías across Navarra and the Basque Country. Diners looking for the full ritual, cider poured tableside from the barrel itself, should confirm current service style directly with the restaurant, since sidrería format can vary by night and by season even at venues that built their identity around it.

The restaurant also takes custom orders with advance notice, including paella, fresh seafood, and roast kid, for groups that want something outside the standard sidrería format entirely.

On the Route, Not Just Near It

It is easy to describe restaurants in Pamplona’s old town as “close to” the bull run, since almost everything in the Casco Viejo is close to it in some sense. Zaldiko’s address puts it on the route itself. Cuesta de Santo Domingo is the first section the bulls and runners cover each morning, and it is the stretch where the animals are moving fastest and least predictably, straight out of the corrals at the base of the hill. A table at Zaldiko during the rest of the year sits on the exact ground that becomes the most dangerous 280 meters in Spain for nine mornings every July.

Currently for Sale, After Nearly Four Decades

As of the most recent reporting available, Zaldiko was listed for sale in 2025, property included, at an asking price of 550,000 euros, through a Pamplona real estate agency, as Molina and Fuentes approach retirement after 37 years running the business themselves. Molina had signaled this was coming as early as 2023, noting he had accumulated enough years of contributions to retire already but was staying on because he still enjoyed the work. No source available confirms a completed sale, and the restaurant continues to appear in current Pamplona restaurant directories under the same name and at the same address. Anyone planning a visit around this specific ownership and history should confirm current status directly with the restaurant before relying on any account, including this one, as up to date on ownership.

Frequently Asked Questions

Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.