Our story
A house, a dining room, and walls that are full
El Pairal is a Spanish restaurant and a gallery inside an old house in the historic center of Toluca.
The name
What a casa pairal is
In Catalan, a casa pairal is the ancestral family home: the parents' house, the one that is handed down and returned to. That is the idea behind the name, and behind the line the restaurant uses to describe itself — a restaurant with the soul of an ancestral home.
It also explains the cooking. Several of the dishes that come out of this kitchen are Catalan: crema catalana, Catalan lentil soup, arroz negro. The rest come from the rest of Spain — Asturias, Galicia, the Basque Country.
A new chapter
From Manolo to El Pairal
Plenty of people in Toluca knew this house as Manolo. The name became El Pairal, and we say so plainly so that anyone who used to come knows it is the same place. The details of that change are the restaurant's to tell when it chooses to: we are not going to invent them here.
Restaurant-gallery
You eat surrounded by art
There is no empty wall. Oil landscapes and watercolors in gilt frames, a large seascape presiding over the dining room, canvases propped wherever one more will fit. Wood wainscoting below, a wine-colored wall behind.
The exhibitions rotate, so the room never looks the same two seasons running. Eating here and seeing a show are the same visit.
Current exhibition
We are not yet publishing on this page what is hanging right now or whose work it is: an artist's name and images go up with their permission, and we are in the middle of asking. In the meantime, this season's walls are on our Instagram — and if you ask us when you reserve, we will tell you.
See Instagram
The kitchen
Spanish classics, made here
Rice cooked to order and served in its pan, fish, stews from the pot. It is a short, Spanish carte — which is exactly what Toluca does not have much of.
See the carteReserve
We'll hold a table for you
Tell us the day, the time and how many of you there are. We'll confirm by phone or email — and if it's for today, calling is faster.