Harold’s is an independent family restaurant. We are not a chain, we do not sell franchises and we have no intention of becoming one. There is only one Harold’s.
Jackson Howard is a chef, born in New Orleans. He trained in some of Louisiana’s best-known restaurants and is an avowed keeper of his home traditions: Southern food, bourbon and, above all, fried chicken. He fell in love with Madrid, started a family here, and spotted a gap that was hard to believe: the city did not have a single place specialising in homemade Southern fried chicken. Only big fast-food chains, or fried chicken from other culinary traditions.
With that idea he opened the first Harold’s, and he is still the one who decides what goes on the menu and what does not: the same family recipes, the same coating and the same way of frying.
We opened in Chamberí, a location chosen deliberately for the concentration of American students in the area. It was a small place with industrial decoration and shop windows hand-painted with New Orleans motifs. Success came straight away, thanks to the quality and generosity of the food at an accessible price.
Demand pushed us to find a far bigger site within the same district. We found the Alonso Cano building, with its three balconies over the street, and designed it to widen the experience radically: from a fried chicken shop to a full immersion in a French Quarter house.
We still do one product, with the same unmodified recipe, run as a family business that expressly rejects the franchise model. We sell more chicken wings than any other restaurant in Madrid, and one night a month we programme live jazz.
The building is inspired by a classic colonial house in the French Quarter. From the street, the three balconies dressed with ferns and the French-style awnings make it look like a private townhouse rather than a restaurant. At night, the lit facade is one of the most photographed things on the street.
The look is eclectic on purpose: nothing matches in any obvious way, and yet the whole thing feels coherent and warm.
We use these three words carefully, because they do not mean the same thing — and at Harold’s all three live side by side.
Soul food is the African American tradition of the American South, rooted in West African culinary techniques. Fried chicken is one of its most emblematic dishes, and that is where our sauces belong: slow-cooked, from family recipes.
Creole cooking was born in urban eighteenth-century New Orleans and blends French, Spanish, African and Caribbean influences. It tends to lean on tomato-based sauces and more refined techniques: gumbo, jambalaya. It is the world our house comes from: the colonial architecture, the jazz, the bourbon.
Cajun cooking belongs to the Acadian French settlers who made their home in the rural bayous of Louisiana. It builds on the roux and rarely uses tomato. That is where our chicken’s spiced crust comes from.
Keeping the distinction alive is not pedantry: it is the difference between respecting a cuisine and using its words as decoration.
“We sell food with soul — soul food. Every recipe has its story.”
The Harold’s team