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Rivalries are boiling over in Madrid, where the official “oldest restaurant in the world” is facing a challenge on its record-setting longevity from another of the city’s historic eateries.

Sobrino de Botín, which opened in 1725, has enjoyed the Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest restaurant since 1987 but, just as it celebrates its third centenary, another establishment – Casa Pedro – is claiming it opened its own doors in 1702.

However, meeting the esoteric rules laid down by the Guinness Book of Records to prove its claim is anything but straightforward. And, even if Casa Pedro is able to navigate the rules – a task stymied by the loss of documents in the Spanish Civil War – to usurp Sobrino de Botín’s crown, a bistro in Rome may yet spoil the party for both of them.

‘Damn it, let’s prove it!’

Just like Sobrino de Botín, Casa Pedro is a family-owned affair, offering Castilian classics, like stewed tripe and roast suckling pig, in a rustic setting with “charming” Spanish tiles, exposed wooden beams and underground wine cellars, said The Independent.

Both venues have welcomed famous visitors. Botín has served a canon of literary giants over the years, including Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene. Ernest Hemingway described it as “one of the best restaurants in the world”. Casa Pedro, for its part, has frequently played host to royals, including Spain‘s current monarch, King Felipe VI.

They’ve much in common but now their rival claims have put them at odds, as Casa Pedro bids to steal Botín’s historic title. “If you look at the restaurant’s logo, it says, ‘Casa Pedro, since 1702,’ so we said, ‘Damn it, let’s try to prove it,” the restaurant’s eighth-generation proprietor Irene Guiñales told The Associated Press. But doing so is not proving an easy task.

‘Went up in flames’

Guinness is cagey about its exact criteria for the title: the verification process is shared only with applicants. But a spokesperson said it requires “substantial evidence” and “documentation”. Antonio González, a third-generation proprietor of Botín, said that Guinness required the restaurant to show that it has continuously operated in the same location and with the same name.

But the vacillations of history don’t always make it simple to produce the evidence: local-archive papers for the area around Casa Pedro “went up in flames” during the Spanish Civil War.

To “make matters dicier”, said Euronews, an Italian trattoria in Rome, may yet “pip” both Sobrino de Botín and Casa Pedro to the oldest-restaurant post. Nestled in the city’s historic centre, La Campana is said to have been in continuous operation for more than 500 years, and its owners say they have completed the necessary paperwork and are ready to submit their case to Guinness.

So the scene is set for a continental culinary battle – but whether diners actually care if their restaurant is officially designated the oldest in the world or not is another matter. David González and Mayte Villena, regulars at Casa Pedro, seemed nonplussed by all the fuss. “It wouldn’t change a thing for us,” they told The Independent.