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Zaranda

Fernando P. Arellano and Itziar Rodríguez—he cooks, she does the rest—have been anointed by the press as Madrid's other young “it” restaurant couple. At Zaranda, an intimate, Michelin-starred nook with wood columns and big murals on the walls, Arellano applies the refinement he learned at the Amalfi Coast's two-starred Don Alfonso to his voluptuous modern-Mediterranean menu: an al dente rice studded with morels and nuggets of cockscomb might precede a neat little slab of crispy-skinned suckling pig served over a caramelized Chinese-cabbage choucroute. The cloudlike goat-cheese mousse dessert with red berry and Rioja sorbet has earned such a following, Arellano had to swear that it would grace his menu forever.