The Top 86 Places to Eat Near Kinari

The name suggests Japanese minimalism, but Kinari is a relaxed, unhurried restaurant in Estella's old town rooted firmly in Navarrese home cooking. The team behind it, one in the kitchen and one running the room, take their time with traditional recipes, leaning on local produce and letting the occasional fusion touch arrive quietly, without announcement. The kind of place where the conversation outlasts the meal.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Michelin-starred restaurant hiding in a blink-and-miss-it village in the Basque mountains, ARREA! splits into three distinct spaces: a taberna to wait, a rustic room for the shorter market menu, and a main dining room for the full gastronomic ride. The chef's cooking leans hard into the surrounding landscape, with partridge, trout, pigeon, deer, wild boar, and foraged lichen doing most of the talking. Driving out this far is part of the point.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant named after the Masai word for "butterfly," which is either charming or a lot, depending on your tolerance for meaningful kitchen mottos. A husband-and-wife team runs the room, and the single menu stays firmly rooted in Navarra, working with small local producers and seasonal ingredients. The dessert called Transformación arrives looking like a silkworm and, supposedly, becomes a butterfly on the plate.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A family-run contemporary restaurant a short walk from the Plaza del Castillo, Europa has held a Michelin star for decades and shows no signs of letting it rattle around. The kitchen leans into Basque and Navarran roots, coaxing deep flavour from impeccably sourced local ingredients. Half-portions on the à la carte make it easier to range across the menu, and two tasting menus are available for those who prefer to hand over the wheel entirely.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A few steps from the bullring in old Pamplona, this family-run fine dining room holds a Michelin star and revolves around a simple conviction: that flavour should do all the talking. The chef grew up in the kitchen and it shows, his take on Navarran cuisine is technically sharp but rooted in the region's produce rather than in showing off. His sisters run the floor with the same ease, and the whole place feels like it has nothing to prove.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Wine bottles double as the front wall here, filtering street light into a casual dining room and lounge-bar tucked into the corner of a Pamplona market. The team does traditional Navarrese cooking with quiet Asian inflections in the dining room, while the bar side turns out elaborate pinchos that treat Basque tradition as a starting point rather than a ceiling. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of neighbourhood spot that earns it without trying to look like it's trying.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Six seats at a counter, a front door that's been around forever, and a chef who trained in Japan under a master of Edomae sushi technique. Kiro is an intimate omakase room in Logroño where the menu circles around nigiri, with grilled and smoked fish dishes woven in. The ritual is the point: arrive on time or you don't get in. It holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Michelin-starred restaurant in Logroño where two chefs who met working under Jordi Cruz at ABaC have built something quietly personal: a fusion of Mexican and La Rioja cooking, à la carte or tasting menu, that nudges spice toward European comfort without losing the point. The tacos al pastor with Iberian pork and grilled pineapple are the clearest argument for what happens when two culinary traditions decide to take each other seriously.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Two chefs who met at the Basque Culinary Center and then kept the arrangement permanent run this Michelin-starred creative restaurant in Logroño. The kitchen belongs to a Spanish-Ecuadorian partnership in life and on the plate: La Rioja's produce meets Andean fruits and condiments in a way that reads less like fusion and more like a long conversation. Carolina Sánchez is also a MasterChef judge back in Ecuador, so the dining room carries a quiet celebrity energy without making a fuss about it.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Cod cooked ajoarriero-style with lobster has been pulling regulars back to this traditional restaurant for long enough that booking ahead is just part of the deal. It's a full-service dining room run by a brother-and-sister team with the kind of polish you'd expect from a family that knows how to run a room. The menu runs à la carte or tasting, and you can order raciones if you'd rather graze than commit.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name nods to the hummingbird, a bird famously picky about which flowers it visits, so consider yourself warned about the menu's focus. This small Navarrese restaurant near the Ensanche Market is run by a young chef whose family keeps a vegetable garden in Corella, and the cooking reflects it: traditional, unfussy, and built around whatever the garden insists on. Meatballs in grandmother's sauce is the kind of dish that explains the whole place in four words.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The lobster tank beside the open kitchen sets the tone before you've even sat down. This is a seafood restaurant near Pamplona's bullring, where the chef came home after years cooking across four continents and landed on something relaxed and unhurried. Oven-baked fish comes straight from the market, rice dishes arrive for two, and the seafood stew has its regulars. No theatre, just a room that smells like the coast.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A life-size pig greets you at the door, which sets the tone perfectly. This Basque dining room on the edge of Lekunberri is built entirely around the Euskal Txerri, a heritage breed raised free-range near Arruitz, and the kitchen follows through with two tasting menus. A charcuterie and fresh-meat shop runs alongside, in case lunch wasn't enough. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the pigs, reportedly, are happy.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A different stew goes on every day at this warm, brick-walled neighborhood restaurant tucked into Logroño's old quarter near the cathedral. The kitchen leans hard on Riojan market produce and the kind of home-style cooking that's been quietly refined rather than reinvented. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks: the food is serious without the room taking itself too seriously.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A contemporary tasting-menu restaurant facing Logroño's co-cathedral, where the two chef-owners work the room as much as the kitchen, which gives the whole thing an easy, personal feel you don't always get at this register. The cooking leans on seasonal Riojan produce and modern technique, though it borrows freely from wherever it feels like, and the cod done in the style of ajoarriero has become something of a calling card.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An old stone mansion on the Camino de Santiago, where pilgrims have shuffled past for centuries, turns out to be the last place you'd expect two Michelin stars. Upstairs, three tables face an open kitchen; downstairs, a more casual room runs a traditional menu. The chef's tasting menu leans hard into Navarra, trout, game, and vegetables from the valleys nearby, all given a quietly inventive treatment that earns the detour from the path.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

Origen occupies the ground floor of an old stone building in Navarre, a rustic-contemporary dining room with bare wood tables and a fixed-price menu that lets you pick a starter, main, and dessert. The chef behind the two-Michelin-star kitchen upstairs runs this one too, just without the ceremony. Seasonal, locally sourced, regional at heart but quietly modern in execution. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A glass-fronted kitchen and a motto, "what's local will protect us," set the tone at this Michelin-starred restaurant in Tolosa. The team runs two tasting menus that shift weekly with whatever's freshest nearby, from farmhouse-rooted Basque cooking brought quietly into the present. In hunting season, things get genuinely wild, roe deer among them. The room is spacious and unfussy, which suits food that argues its case through restraint rather than spectacle.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Páganos sits in the middle of La Rioja Alavesa wine country, which makes a cozy tasting-menu restaurant run by a husband-and-wife team feel like an entirely sensible idea. He cooks contemporary Basque food built around whatever the season hands him; she runs the room and knows the local bottles cold. The menu comes in two lengths, so you're not committed to the full voyage if you'd rather not be.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked inside the Viñedos de Páganos winery in the Basque countryside, this tasting-menu restaurant shares its name with one of the estate's signature wines. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the vineyards and mountains, so the setting does half the work before a plate arrives. The chef runs two menus, one rooted in tradition, one more adventurous, with some dishes crossing over between them in a loose, à la carte spirit that keeps things from feeling too ceremonial.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The ribeye draws diners from across the Rioja, and that pretty much tells you what kind of steakhouse this is. Tucked beside a church in a quiet village square, Alameda is a family-run grill built around the quality of its ingredients, with whole fish and seasonal specials rounding out a menu that doesn't need to show off. Order whatever the kitchen picked up that morning and you'll be fine.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The Frank Gehry hotel that looks like a crumpled wine foil dropped on a Rioja hillside is the setting, and the restaurant inside leans into that drama. Chef Francis Paniego runs two tasting menus of modern Basque cooking, rooted in seasonal produce from Rioja and Álava, with one famous croquette recipe inherited from his mother that rather steals the show. Dress well; the titanium roof sets a high bar.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A deer farm sits just next door, which sets the tone rather well for a mountain inn that has been feeding travelers through the Ulzama valley for generations. The dining room is all open fireplace and warm wood, and the traditional menu follows the season faithfully, swinging from wild mushrooms to game as the valley dictates. The views from the terrace over the surrounding hills are the kind that make you order another glass.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The oak grill sits in plain sight, and that's the whole argument. This Basque parrilla in Tolosa has been doing one thing for a long time: thick bone-in txuletón from mature cows, grilled over oak coals with salt and very little else to hide behind. It ranks sixth on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tracks. Peppers and asparagus arrive with the same seriousness as the beef. The room is plain, the service is calm, and nobody here is trying to impress you with novelty.

1. World's 101 Best #6 · World's Best Steak Restaurants

The tour of the kitchen garden comes before you even sit down, which tells you what you need to know about priorities here. This two-Michelin-starred restaurant in a tiny Riojan village runs on what the team calls "the luxury of immediacy," meaning the menu follows the harvest, not the other way around. Three tasting menus shift with the seasons, built around two or three elements at a time. The chef's brother runs the room and the wine cellar with equal care.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

Thick stone walls and exposed beams frame an open fire that does all the real talking at this Basque steakhouse in a historic Gipuzkoan town. The chuleta, a dry-aged bone-in cut cooked over charcoal and wood, is the point entirely. The team reads heat, humidity, and fat with the kind of quiet confidence that comes from doing one thing for a long time. It ranks among the World's Best Steak Restaurants, which should settle the debate about whether to make the drive.

1. World's 101 Best #37 · World's Best Steak Restaurants

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room doubles as a gallery for Baroness Ariane de Rothschild's art collection, which sets a certain tone before you've even looked at the menu. This is a formal restaurant inside a luxury boutique hotel, where the chef brings a Portuguese sensibility to Basque ingredients, with Galician and French ideas folded in at the edges. There's an evolving à la carte and a tasting menu, both anchored to whatever the season is doing locally.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Stone walls, open beams, and antique furniture that looks like it was already old when the inn opened set the tone at this family-run country restaurant in rural Navarre. Traditional Basque cooking anchors the menu, with seasonal events built around wild mushrooms, game, and whatever the moment calls for. The Michelin Guide has awarded it a Bib Gourmand. Guestrooms are available if the valley persuades you to stay another night.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A short walk from Vitoria's old town, Karmine is a modern tasting menu restaurant where the chef has made a project of rescuing forgotten Álava recipes and near-extinct local ingredients, filtered through his mother's Valencian roots. The menu, eight or ten courses, changes constantly through close work with local farmers. The wine list leans hard into the region, and the team will happily steer you through it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name comes from multiplying 12 dishes by 12 signature cocktails, which tells you something about how seriously this place takes its own fun. It's a tasting menu restaurant in Vitoria-Gasteiz, running either 17 or 21 courses of fusion cooking that pulls from Southeast Asia, Japan, and wherever else seems interesting that week. The menu shifts constantly, and the kitchen pairs food and cocktails as a single project rather than an afterthought.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An air-conditioned courtyard tucked inside a Vitoria-Gasteiz address that's been around forever, now steered by a sibling duo who've quietly made it their own. This is a traditional Spanish restaurant with a modernist streak, where the menu shifts with the market and the dining room hums along under attentive family service. Lunch on a weekday unlocks a set menu; evenings lean more deliberate, with a tasting option for those who came prepared.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The walls here tell their own story: framed photos of the owner alongside celebrated chefs from across Spain and beyond, a quiet way of saying this place has been in the conversation a long time. It's a classic full-service restaurant on one of Vitoria-Gasteiz's main avenues, built around reinterpreted traditional cooking and a grill that takes its fish and meat seriously. A tasting menu runs alongside the carte.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Everything here runs through fire. Etxebarri is a grill restaurant tucked into a Basque mountain village so quiet you'll wonder if you've made a wrong turn, but the reservation you booked months ago confirms you haven't. The chef built his own tools and a pulley system to control the flames, burning different woods for different things. It holds a Michelin star and sits at number two on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, which the pilgrimage-length waitlist will have already suggested.

1. 50 Best #2 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. 50 Best The World’s Best Sommelier Award 2025 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants · Mohamed Benabdallah
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The restaurant sits inside a working txakoli winery, with big windows framing the vineyards and mountains so you don't forget where you are for a second. The chef, always in a traditional beret, runs a menu rooted in Basque classics, cooking the stews over wood and charcoal and pulling the appetizers straight from his garden. Spider crab, stuffed baby squid, Tolosa beans: the Basque hits parade, done with conviction.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The logo is Martín Berasategui's own handwriting, which tells you something about the man's sense of self. This is a three-Michelin-star fine dining restaurant outside San Sebastián, with countryside views and a menu that moves between long-running signature dishes and entirely new ideas each season. The tasting menu is the reason to make the drive to Lasarte-Oria, and the service is run with the kind of quiet precision that makes a long lunch feel effortless.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars

A pedestrian street in Alfaro is an unlikely place to find a chef who trained under one of Spain's most celebrated cooks, but here we are. Morro Tango is a contemporary Spanish restaurant where the kitchen leans hard into Rioja's larder, shopping the market daily and keeping the menu rooted in local produce. The Michelin Guide recognized it with a Bib Gourmand. The stews are worth asking about specifically.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A small glossary sits on your table when you arrive at Mugaritz, with terms defined by the chef, the staff, and past diners, which tells you everything about what kind of meal you're in for. Andoni Luis Aduriz holds two Michelin stars and a spot on the World's 50 Best list, and runs a single tasting menu where dishes arrive out of order, many eaten by hand, and the line between dinner and provocation stays usefully blurry.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. 50 Best #87 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants

The T-bone arrives grilled over holm oak charcoal, and the smoke does most of the talking. This family-run restaurant in a small Navarrese village has one brother in the kitchen and one working the room, a setup that gives the place a relaxed, lived-in confidence. The dining rooms feel contemporary but not scrubbed of character. Traditional cooking with a light modern touch, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand to show for it.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A centuries-old farmhouse tucked well off any beaten path, with a terrace, a rustic dining room, and a wine cellar running to over a thousand labels managed by the front-of-house chef, who doubles as sommelier. The kitchen leans into Basque tradition without apology, letting local ingredients carry the weight. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place this committed to the region on its plate.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A Japanese chef restored a century-old Basque farmhouse in a village so quiet you can hear it, then started merging Japanese technique with the wood-fired grill traditions of a traditional txoko. The tasting menu changes with the seasons, drawing from a kitchen garden and foraged mountain plants, and opens beside the grill itself before moving to a small, warm dining room. It holds a Michelin star and lands on the World's 50 Best list.

1. 50 Best #85 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The turbot arrives whole off a wood-fired grill, and if you need anything else explained about Elkano, this is probably not your restaurant. A Michelin-starred seafood grill in the harbor town of Getaria, it holds a spot on the World's 50 Best list and earns it the old way: exceptional fish, serious sourcing, and a grill technique that makes "just cooking" sound like an insult. Meat exists, but the sea is the point.

1. 50 Best #24 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The Bay of Biscay fills the windows of this three-Michelin-star dining room on Mt Igueldo, so the view alone earns its keep before the food arrives. Pedro Subijana, one of the architects of New Basque Cuisine, runs a kitchen where creativity and tradition argue it out in a way that feels less like a debate and more like a long marriage. The tasting menu leans into reinvented classics alongside newer work, and the wine-by-the-glass list is quietly serious.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars

A contemporary restaurant tucked into a medieval village of stone facades and castle walls, which makes the red-and-white interior and wine-country references feel like a deliberate provocation. The kitchen leans into Rioja tradition, lamb tripe and trotters and all, then pivots to more modern territory without losing the thread. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, so the cooking punches above what the bill suggests.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Elena Arzak runs this three-Michelin-star dining room alongside her father Juan Mari, and the kitchen maintains a private lab in the same building stocked with over a thousand ingredients for ongoing flavor experiments. The result is contemporary Basque fine dining that feels rooted rather than restless, where the techniques are surprising but the soul of the food reads as plainly local. The wine list runs to three thousand bottles, which is its own kind of argument.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars

A Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant inside a 16th-century aristocratic property, where the renovation kept the wear and the character rather than smoothing it all away. The chef, who trained at Mugaritz, runs two menus rooted in La Rioja's ingredients and landscapes, with wood-fired cooking doing a lot of the heavy lifting. The internal patio, presided over by a glowing goddess at night, is the kind of room that makes you forget to check your phone.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

An open kitchen inside the grand Hotel Maria Cristina, where Argentine chef Paulo Airaudo runs a two-Michelin-starred tasting menu he calls an Italian omakase, drawing the Cantabrian Sea through a Japanese lens. The bar is a serious part of the experience, not an afterthought, and the single seasonal menu comes with a pairing option that can go alcohol-free. Elegant without being stiff, and genuinely hard to categorize, which seems to be the point.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Bay of Biscay from atop Mount Igueldo, and the view alone earns the drive up. This is a Michelin-starred dining room inside a boutique hotel, where the chef runs the kitchen alongside his wife and son, which makes the hospitality feel less like service and more like a family argument you're invited to enjoy. Two tasting menus anchor the experience, one a tribute to a mentor, the other the chef's own contemporary hand.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The entrance bar still does pinchos to order with an informal glass of wine, but downstairs is a different proposition: a small basement dining room with six oversized tables, each with its own cupboard, built for the kind of attention that a Michelin-starred tasting menu requires. Paulo Airaudo's kitchen stays close to classic Basque cooking, grilled prawns, rock fish soup, kokotxas done three ways. The full wine list is available by the glass, which is either generous or dangerous, depending on the table.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The name is a nod to the cheeks of hake or cod, one of the Basque kitchen's quiet obsessions, and the cooking follows that same logic: rooted in local tradition, shaped by the market, occasionally nudged by Japan or India in ways that never feel like a gimmick. This is a one Michelin star restaurant in the old town, steps from the port, running set menus for the whole table. The fish of the day is the thing to watch.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

The name comes from a Rioja dialect word for scraping the plate clean, which sets the tone before you've even sat down. This restaurant inside a hotel in one of Spain's prettiest medieval villages serves an updated take on regional Riojan cooking, with trompe-l'oeil flourishes tucked among the intense flavors. A vaulted wine cellar runs beneath the room. The menu comes as a journey, short or long, and the wine list has the conviction you'd expect from this corner of Spain.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Candles stuck in bottles light the tables at dinner, which tells you most of what you need to know about this bistro-style spot on a pedestrianised street minutes from the beach in Zarautz. The cooking is rooted in Basque-Navarrese tradition, seasonal and market-driven, with small local producers and nearby fishermen supplying the kitchen. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the honest, unfussy feel of the place.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The building has been standing since the 16th century, and Los Caños wears its bones well, mixing old stone and vaulted details with a cleaner, more current look. It's a full sit-down restaurant in Haro's La Herradura tapas quarter, the kind of place you duck into when the pintxos crawl needs a proper pause. The kitchen leans into traditional Riojan cooking, with Rioja-style cod as a reliable anchor and whatever the kitchen's small kitchen garden is producing that week.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A centuries-old farmhouse at the foot of Anboto mountain, with stone walls, wood beams, and a terrace that looks out over the valley like a painting someone forgot to finish. This is a traditional Basque restaurant, the kind that takes grilled dishes and regional ingredients seriously without making a fuss about it. A lunchtime set menu sits alongside the à la carte, and the locals filling the room rarely seem to need a recommendation.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sitting inside an industrial estate is not the obvious move for a Basque restaurant, yet here Agorregi is, doing it without apology. The menu runs à la carte or through two tasting menus, all rooted in market-driven Basque cooking with the occasional contemporary flourish. One practical note: some desserts need to be ordered upfront so the kitchen can prepare them, which is either charming or a test of your planning instincts.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

On the road up to Mt Igueldo, this old-school Basque restaurant has the weathered exterior of a countryside inn and a dining room that quietly undercuts your expectations. The kitchen leans on tradition, baked crab and hake in parsley sauce among the anchors, but keeps one foot moving forward with more composed, seasonal plates. The wine list runs deep enough that even seasoned regulars find something to chase down.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name is the street number of the chef's family home in São Paulo, which tells you something about how personal this restaurant feels. It sits on the ground floor of a hotel steps from La Concha Beach, serving a short à la carte and a tasting menu that wanders freely, Basque ingredients one moment, then Mexico, Japan, or France the next. The cooking uses technique as a means rather than a point, which is rarer than it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The open grill smoking on the street outside is your first sign that Kaia Kaipe takes the serious route with seafood. This old-school Getaria institution sits above the port it's named for, with terraces that look straight out over the water. Live tanks hold the day's catch, the wine cellar runs to tens of thousands of bottles, and the grilled turbot for two is the order most tables seem to be waiting for.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Across the street from the Buen Pastor cathedral, Narru runs two rooms under one roof: a casual front space for pintxos and drinks, and a tablecloth dining room behind it where the à la carte gives way to a tasting menu that leans hard on the grill. The fish, especially, gets the treatment, turbot, sole, and red mullet over live fire. Market-driven and traditional, with enough technique to keep things interesting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A twelve-seat counter is the whole room, which tells you what kind of dinner this is going to be. The couple behind it cook Basque food through a Peruvian lens, a combination that sounds like a pitch but plays out with real conviction on the plate. The tasting menu is the move, though the à la carte holds its own. Sit in Gros, near the Kursaal, and let them feed you.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The ground-floor pintxo bar is a scrum of tourists and locals, but upstairs the dining room gets quieter and more composed. This is a full sit-down restaurant in the old quarter, where the kitchen puts traditional Basque cooking through a careful, market-driven update. Grilled flatfish, kokotxas done three ways, and whatever looked good at the market that morning are the reasons to climb the stairs.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked into the old town's maze of pintxos bars, Bodegón Alejandro is a sit-down Basque restaurant that takes the food more seriously than the décor, which suits everyone just fine. The room feels rustic but not fussy, and the cooking follows the same logic: seasonal, local, and rooted in tradition. The menu runs from fried anchovies to cod done in pil-pil with crab, plus a tasting menu if you want the full tour.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Grilled octopus and boneless oxtail in the Gros neighborhood, served in portions sized for people who skipped lunch on purpose. Ikaitz is a family-run Basque restaurant on the Paseo Colón, and the room fills early with a mix of locals and visitors who found it in the same guidebook you're holding right now. The kitchen keeps things traditional and regional, leaning on good fish, premium meats, and locally sourced produce without any fuss about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked in the basement of another restaurant, this tasting menu spot channels a genuine speakeasy feeling before you've even ordered. The kitchen opens onto the dining room, and the chef works a fusion of Basque and Mexican cooking built around local produce. The longer tasting menu is called Amakase, a riff on omakase that folds in the Basque word for mother. The concept sounds fussy on paper but the room is warmer than that.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Grilled vegetables take center stage at this relaxed restaurant inside the Kursaal congress center, where the kitchen carries the stamp of celebrated chef Andoni Luis Aduriz. The Nordic-inflected dining room opens onto a terrace with views over the mouth of the Urumea river, and the menu moves between à la carte, daily specials, and a tasting menu. Sitting at the bar counter means watching everything come together right in front of you.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass of cava appears in your hand before you've found your seat, which tells you most of what you need to know about Sa Taula. This tiny contemporary restaurant in the Gros district seats ten guests at most, all eating together, with the two chefs simultaneously cooking, serving, and chatting across the room. One surprise menu, drinks included, ingredients from small local producers. Dinner party energy, without the obligation to bring anything.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Perched on the slopes of Mt Ulía with a panoramic terrace and its own kitchen garden visible from the dining room, this is a traditional Basque restaurant where the hake arrives multiple ways and the bread is baked daily with organic flour. The menu leans hard into Basque classics, spider crab, pil-pil, salsa verde, alongside daily specials that shift with whatever came in fresh. Views included, no upcharge.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A corner of the Gros district where a neighborhood bar became a casual bistro, run by three partners who came up through the Basque Culinary Center together. The cooking is contemporary Basque, leaning hard on vegetables from small local growers, with fish and meat rounding things out. You can eat at a proper table or pull up at the bar counter, which tends to fill first.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The views of Zurriola beach from Monte Ulía are the kind that make you forget you were supposed to be paying attention to dinner. This creative tasting-menu restaurant has been in the same family for three generations, and the current chef builds menus around Basque ingredients and the dietary habits of populations that apparently live forever. Whether that's the fish or the wine pairing doing the work is left as an exercise for the diner.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room is a restored 17th-century wine cellar, all stone and timber, and the kind of place that makes you feel vaguely obligated to order a second bottle. This Riojan restaurant leans into the regional pantry with a traditional menu that admits the occasional modern idea without making a fuss about it. Daily specials keep things from feeling static. Slow-cooked egg and braised oxtail are the dishes regulars seem to plan around.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The underground tunnels where Rioja wine once aged are now where dinner starts, with a round of garden-fresh appetizers setting the tone before you move upstairs. This is a tasting-menu restaurant in a seventeenth-century bodega, all stone and quiet grandeur, running three set menus of contemporary Spanish cooking. An attic lounge handles post-dinner drinks, which tells you this isn't a place you're meant to rush through.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Basque inn perched at the Lizarrieta Pass on the French-Spanish border, at the end of a road that suggests you've taken a wrong turn. The building supposedly moonlighted as a smugglers' den at some point, which does give the lamb something to live up to. The chef forages the herbs and mushrooms himself, and the cooking leans creative without losing its footing in the landscape. The terrace view across the hills is, frankly, the accomplice.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant