A four-hour itinerary that stops in four restaurants in central Madrid is, practically speaking, a food tour. But for Marwa Preston, a Microsoft alum turned hospitality pro who launched the Europe-based tour company Elysian Tales in May, the category fails to capture the curated luxury experience she puts together. This is no bar crawl with snacks. Does a standard food tour typically start in the kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant, where guests get to meet chefs over a scene-setting aperitivo?
“What I’m aiming to do in four hours is let people see the city’s food scene from every angle,” Preston says, “not just one slice of it.”
In many ways, Elysian Tales is more a rapid-pace foodie immersion. Led by a local host who knows everything about a city’s culinary landscape, these private sessions—currently bookable in Lisbon, Madrid, and Barcelona, with Paris to come—are crafted to show off what makes a neighborhood delicious through four types of restaurants. Starting at Encanto in Lisbon or Atempo in Barcelona might just help justify Elysian Tales’s 400€ (per person) price tag.
“It’s not just watching a working kitchen, it’s being part of it—using the tweezers to finish your own dish while chatting with the chef,” Preston says. “There’s a magic in actually being in it that’s hard to capture in words.”
In Madrid’s Justicia and Chueca neighborhoods, where the company was founded, this happens at Saddle, just before dinner service begins. Guests are escorted to the kitchen where they’re handed a glass of Corpinnat, a premium wine within the world of Cava. Within seconds, a tower of butter from Normandy in the shape of a cone appears out of nowhere; it arrives with bread from a local bakery called Panic. Preston says there’s usually a waitlist for this sourdough. Here, you get as much as you want. But to make the 45-minute visit more interactive, you get to help assemble the menestra, a traditional vegetable stew from northern Spain, plated at Saddle like a delicate work of art.
Preston reveals that before Elysian Tales, the restaurant had never invited diners to eat in its kitchen before, but she insisted on that level of access and the team at Saddle came through. Now, across the entire brand, which recently expanded into Lisbon and Barcelona, all tours set off in a Michelin kitchen.
“What we built with Saddle set the tone for what we now expect from every restaurant we work with,” Preston says.
The next two stops in Madrid explore opposing sides of how a city eats. There’s the traditional bar to sample a few small plates of food typical to the destination—house-marinated Andalusian olives, croquetas de cocido—followed by a larger “meal” at hotspots like Roostiq and Raza. Preston reveals that it’s the former that’s been the most difficult to organize. She focuses on tabernas in Spain, tascas in Lisbon, and when she launches in Paris in the fall, bistros, where guests can still feel history not just through food but also ambience and decor.
Preston wants guests to dine somewhere authentic, where locals actually go, that’s beautiful and has kept its charm—“and where English isn’t the dominant language,” Preston says. “The world is moving in a different direction, and places like that are slowly being lost, so what we’re doing is finding the last ones standing and celebrating them.”
In Madrid’s Carmencita, a relic from the 19th century with handpainted tiles covering the walls and tables topped with marble, it’s all about a little vermouth (served in glasses exclusively chosen for Elysian Tales diners), delicate pieces of Cantabrian anchovies, a bowl of Russian salad, and housemade beef pâté, an uncommon recipe these days.
If the second location looks to tradition and heritage, the third is all about securing tables that are hard to get right now. Preston says these are usually personal choices, the restaurants where she would take visiting friends. In the Spanish capital, it’s the sexy, dimly lit Charrúa, an Uruguayan steakhouse serving, along with beautifully prepared meat, the juiciest tomatoes in town. At nearby tables, there might be a romantic date happening or a lively family in for a celebratory dinner. The vibe definitely tells you that you’ve landed somewhere everyone wants to go.
The itinerary ends with a nightcap in a cocktail bar (in Madrid that’s in the maximalist Bar Manero) where an element of play is introduced. “Instead of asking guests what they normally drink, we show them perfumes, play them songs, sometimes show them art,” Preston explains, “and read their mood from that to build them a cocktail.”
Maybe this is why Preston is reluctant to call Elysian Tales a tour operator. The experience provides a great deal of hospitality to ensure everything happens smoothly. (Hosts are constantly exchanging messages to address last-minute dietary concerns, for instance.) And there’s no shortage of storytelling, whether it’s about the neighborhood itself or the dishes being sampled, including the focus on zero-waste and kilometer-zero practices.
There’s no ordering involved; Preston and her team work directly with the restaurants to identify what would best represent them and the destination, whether that’s a stewed-pork bifana sandwich in Lisbon or Franca Barcelona’s take on chef Alain Passard’s Huevo Passard, a delicate egg dish spiked with a Catalan liqueur called ratafia. Preston says guests appreciate the element of surprise—and not having to make a single decision for four hours.
If there’s one component that most likens Elysian Tales to a typical food tour, it’s the walking, and that’s why Preston confines the program to one or two neighborhoods—so her guests won’t have to trot from restaurant to restaurant for more than 15 minutes. For those with mobility issues or simply don’t want to tolerate a humid summer night in Madrid or tackle the hills in Lisbon, cars can be arranged. While these tours are most often requested at night, they can be done during the day, too, featuring many of the same restaurants.
Access, as they say, is everything. How else do you pop into the kitchen of Quique Dacosta’s Deessa for 45 minutes to enjoy a glass of bubbles before slithering off to your next stop? You’ll need Elysian Tales for that. “With the timing and logistics we run, the venues know exactly when we arrive and leave,” she says, “meaning they agree to terms with us they wouldn’t with a regular guest.”
Elysian Tales runs nights in Lisbon, Barcelona, and Madrid, with Paris coming in fall 2026. From around $460 (400 euros).