The Best Places to Eat Near La Villa Agua Amarga, by the Record

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Whitewashed walls, cactus on the terrace, and the crumbling ruins of a 19th-century iron ore terminal just down the road: Agua Amarga's most remote dining room earns its approach. This rustic-contemporary Spanish grill sits on the Carboneras road outside town, with two fireplace-lit rooms and a terrace ringed with prickly pears. The kitchen leans traditional with Arab and North African threads woven in, and the daily fish and beef entrecôte tend to do the heavy lifting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A statue of the family's founder stands outside on the street, which tells you most of what you need to know about this place's standing in Vera. It's a traditional regional restaurant inside a small hotel, earning a Michelin Bib Gourmand for unpretentious Almería cooking done with care: grilled meats, fresh fish, local seafood, and daily specials that change with the market. The terrace is the move when the weather holds.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A wall of colorful vegetables at the entrance sets the tone at this gastrobar on the ground floor of the Avenida Hotel. The open kitchen turns out contemporary Andalusian cooking that moves between traditional and modern, available à la carte or through set menus, including a fully plant-based option that treats Almería's famous produce as the main event rather than the supporting cast.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The chef's childhood in Almería and his years cooking in the Netherlands make an unlikely but coherent pair on the plate. This contemporary Mediterranean restaurant runs on a single surprise tasting menu, where local red prawns and gurullos pasta meet Japanese and Peruvian notes without any of it feeling like a geography lesson. Wine pairings are available, and the room feels like somewhere a cook opened a restaurant because he actually wanted to, not to impress anyone.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A mural of a giant black-and-white octopus covers one wall of this grilled seafood restaurant tucked into a narrow lane in Almería's old quarter. The room keeps a certain rustic Castilian weight to it despite a renovation, which is an odd aesthetic for a kitchen that now answers almost entirely to whatever the boats brought in that morning. Order from the grill and let the octopus watch.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant