The Top 64 Places to Eat Near Natxo Sellés

Stone walls and a glass-fronted porch set the tone for this regional restaurant in a restored old building in Cocentaina. The chef rotates the menu with the seasons and keeps rice at the center of things, with both paella and creamy varieties that regulars tend to order without consulting the rest of the card. A Michelin Bib Gourmand. Traditional oxtail stew fills out the heavier end of the menu, and gluten-free options are genuinely woven in.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A two-Michelin-star restaurant in a villa on the slopes of Montcabrer, outside a small Valencian town most GPS units give up on. The kitchen has been a family affair for generations, and the cooking leans hard into the terroir: local produce, seasonal rhythms, and the rice dishes the region lives and breathes. The signature arroz comes out of a rectangular iron tray, finished in the oven, and the wine list keeps up.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

A fireplace usually lit and exposed beams overhead set the mood at this family-home restaurant in a small Valencia hill town. The menu leans into regional recipes, though the kitchen tilts them a little lighter and more contemporary than you might expect. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and the husband-and-wife team running the room and the kitchen between them probably has something to do with that warmth.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A family-run creative Mediterranean restaurant in the quiet town of la Nucía, El Xato has been around forever, starting as a winery before working its way up to a Michelin star. The chef builds her menus around Alicante's deep larder, reinterpreting Mediterranean tradition without losing sight of where the food actually comes from. Two tasting menus, a strong Valencian wine list, and a dining room run by family who seem to mean it.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The desserts here nod to Ibi's old reputation as the ice cream capital of Spain, which is a fine way to end a meal at this contemporary regional restaurant near the town center. The kitchen leans on ingredients from the Foia de Castalla area, turning them into clean, modern dishes. Smaller sharing portions keep the table lively without breaking the bill, and the pricing stays sensibly grounded for cooking this considered.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A century-old vine shades the terrace of this converted farmhouse in the Marina Alta, where the kitchen turns out contemporary Mediterranean cooking with an eye toward classic pairings. The dining room opens onto a half-visible kitchen, which is either theatrical or reassuring depending on your temperament. It holds a Michelin star under the BonAmb group, with the two-star chef Alberto Ferruz overseeing the room.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The chef picks his own aromatic herbs, lemon basil and thyme and mint and verbena, and those flavors end up doing most of the talking on the plate. This small, unhurried modern Mediterranean restaurant in Alicante holds a Michelin star, and it runs like a family project: one chef, one front-of-house manager who also handles the wine. Menus come in short and long versions, with a handful of shareable dishes on the side for people who can't commit.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A small Mediterranean restaurant on a pedestrianized street in Gandia's old town, where the menu changes daily and the kitchen decides what you're eating based on the market. The two-person team runs tasting menus built around fish and vegetables, so there's no à la carte safety net, just whatever looked good that morning. The cooking skews creative while staying rooted in the region, which is more discipline than it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Perched above Calp with an unobstructed view of the Peñón de Ifach rock, Orobianco is a contemporary Italian fine dining restaurant where the kitchen pairs Italian technique with Costa Blanca ingredients, the sea and the garden arriving on the plate in very clean, precise form. The cooking holds a Michelin star and landed on the 50 Top Italy world list. Two tasting menus, or à la carte if you prefer to make your own decisions.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. 50 Top Italy #28 · The Best Italian Restaurants In The World

The glass-fronted kitchen faces the dining room so you can watch the team coax those broths into something almost impossibly delicate. This is a contemporary tasting-menu restaurant in a small Valencian city, built around the hyperlocal cooking of the Carcaixent area: organic produce, old stews, and the kind of sauces that take real technique to make look effortless. It holds a Michelin star, and the menu names are the town, the land, and the crops.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Swedish-Spanish chef with a name that will make you do a double-take runs this relaxed restaurant steps from the beach in El Campello, blending Nordic instincts with Mediterranean and regional Spanish flavors. The menu shifts three times a year and comes in tasting format or à la carte, with the gravadlax built from a family recipe worth tracking down. Nothing here feels like it's trying to impress you, which is usually when a meal does.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The restaurant inside The Cookbook hotel earns a Michelin star through the chef's particular double act, pairing Mediterranean vitality with the kind of French finesse that shows up in small, telling details, Normandy butter among them. The room runs white and bright, the cooking spans tasting menus and an à la carte, one menu goes fully vegetarian, and the whole thing moves with a precision that makes the French-Mediterranean overlap feel less like a concept and more like a conviction.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Handmade pasta and a terrace view over the Mediterranean tend to settle most arguments about where to eat. This Michelin-starred restaurant in Benissa's hills runs on the cooking of a chef from Rimini who treats local Alicante produce as the point of the whole exercise, not a supporting note. The format is two tasting menus, one leaning Italian, one rooted in the region, and the kitchen keeps both ideas in honest conversation.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The tableware is thrown in the basement, which tells you something about how seriously this creative restaurant in Alicante takes its own world-building. Guests move through themed rooms with names like Cocoon Lab and Geoda Verde, each with its own lighting and scent, before landing at a table. Chef Pablo Montoro runs travel-inspired Mediterranean menus that range from a weekday lunch to a full immersive experience where he walks you through his fermentation work personally.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A sprawling seafood restaurant next to the bus station, which tells you everything and nothing about what's inside: a long bar-style display counter loaded with fish pulled from local auctions and Galicia, and a regional reputation built almost entirely on aioli. Ask for the tasting of sauces with bread before anything else arrives. Rice dishes, priced-by-weight shellfish, and daily specials fill out a menu that takes its time.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A cozy Italian restaurant in a residential corner of Alicante, Alba earns its Michelin Bib Gourmand by threading local ingredients through a genuinely Italian sensibility, the result of the chef's years cooking in Italy. The menu runs à la carte or tasting, with off-menu specials like the catch of the day keeping things loose. A lemon and yuzu tartlet with lime and celery sorbet signals you're in capable, slightly mischievous hands.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Named for Audrey Hepburn and holding a Michelin star, this fine dining restaurant in Calp runs on tasting menus built around the Valencia region's soil and seasons. The chef presses his own olive oil from thousand-year-old trees and bakes bread from a family recipe in a dedicated oven across town, which tells you something about the level of commitment before a single course arrives. The food is technical and creative, but the Mediterranean anchors everything.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A donut topped with bravas sauce has no business working as well as it apparently does, but that's the kitchen's whole attitude at this casual Mediterranean spot on a tree-lined avenue in Cabo de las Huertas. Downstairs is a bar with a few tables, upstairs a small dining room. The menu moves through tapas, cured meats, preserves, and a calamari sandwich that has almost nothing in common with the Madrid original.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The tasting menu is called Octavo, a pointed nod to the eight arts, the seventh being cinema and the eighth, apparently, whatever Quique Dacosta is doing in Dénia. This is haute cuisine built around the Mediterranean but rethought almost completely each year, three Michelin stars and a spot on the World's 50 Best list confirming what the room already feels like: somewhere that takes the meal very seriously and expects you to as well.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars
2. 50 Best #65 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants

A contemporary dining room near the old-town market in Pedreguer, where two Le Cordon Bleu graduates run a tasting-menu restaurant built around local Mediterranean produce. The kitchen leans modern without losing sight of the region, and the desserts tend to stop the table mid-conversation, which tracks when the chef behind them made his name in pastry. Two menus, both available with wine pairing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wooden shoe lasts mounted on the wall nod to Alicante's old shoemaking trade, which is either the most obscure tribute in the restaurant world or a very cool one. This tasting-menu spot runs through a set sequence that begins at a communal "Mother Table" where the chef kicks off with appetizers and explains the concept before you move on. The cooking leans on local pantry staples, red prawns, blanquet, and nougat, worked into something quietly modern.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The kitchen has no freezer, which tells you almost everything about what kind of place this is. Tábula Rasa is a small Spanish restaurant in Alicante's Benalúa district, with a calm, traditional room and a menu that shifts nearly every day around whatever's good. Rice dishes and fideuás anchor the cooking, rooted in local tradition but handled with real technique. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The kitchen is open-view and the menu follows the same logic: a modern Spanish restaurant where you build your own tasting from half-portion dishes, with the chefs explaining and plating their own food. The room has an eclectic look that suits the loose, come-as-you-are spirit of the thing. The Gilda Open has become a house classic, and the lobster salpicón with tomato broth shows where the kitchen's ambitions actually sit.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Five tables and a half-open kitchen near Alicante's Central Market, where the chef works in plain view and the menu follows whatever looked good at the fish market that morning. Plëgat is a small contemporary restaurant that runs both à la carte and a full tasting menu, leaning on regional produce and market fish. Intimate is the word they use; unhurried is probably the better one.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room at this bistro-style spot inside Calp's Cook Book hotel earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand despite sitting well off the tourist trail, which is either the point or the punchline depending on how you got here. Bare tables at mismatched heights, big picture windows, and what feels like an alarming number of pendant lamps set the scene. The menu swings wide: pizzas, cocas, rice dishes, grilled things, and a steak tartare that regulars tend to order twice.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Steki means "meeting place" in Greek, and the name does most of the explaining. This small, casual restaurant on a pedestrian lane in Alicante's old quarter is run by a Mexican-Greek couple who cook the Mediterranean with the inflections you'd expect from that biography. The format is sharing plates, with a minimum of five dishes between two, which turns out to be a perfectly reasonable way to work through a menu that moves between continents without making a fuss about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name nods to the common Greek dialect that once stitched the ancient Mediterranean together, and the kitchen takes the idea literally, tracing the region's cooking back to its shared roots. This is a mid-level restaurant where Andalusian culinary tradition meets contemporary Alicante, shaped by a chef with time in Dani García's R&D kitchen. The aged picaña steak tartare with smoked eel on marrow has drawn its own following.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Stone walls and Peruvian-Mediterranean cooking in the center of Alacant, where the menu keeps landing somewhere between Valencia and Lima in ways that take a moment to process. The chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu and the Basque Culinary Center before opening this sit-down restaurant, and the rice dishes, finished with South American chiles and aromatics, are where the two kitchens collide most convincingly. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sitting beside the old fish exchange on Alicante's marina, Monastrell is a contemporary Mediterranean restaurant built around whatever is growing or swimming nearby, much of it from the team's own kitchen garden a few miles inland. The cooking leans into clean, unfussy flavors that read as classically Alicantine even when the technique is modern. The terrace catches a good breeze off the water, which helps explain why it fills up fast.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The azulejo tiles and open kitchen set the tone at this family-run restaurant in Alzira, where traditional Valencian cooking gets a quiet, considered update. One brother runs the room, the other runs the stoves, and the founder still wanders in occasionally, as founders do. The Michelin Bib Gourmand menu leans on local product without making a fuss about it. A few tasting menus sit alongside a concise à la carte.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

An old farmhouse at a crossroads in the Valencia countryside, converted into a Mediterranean tasting-menu restaurant with several dining rooms, one anchored by a fireplace, and a terrace for opening drinks. The chef's menus trace a path through regional produce, with a thread of Argentine heritage woven in. An adjoining space runs a more traditional operation if you'd rather skip the procession.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Seagulls and port smells are free; the Michelin-starred dining room upstairs costs more. Peix & Brases runs two floors with two personalities: a ground-floor gastro-bar doing what the menu calls Mediterrasian, and a formal dining room above it with tasting menus and a terrace overlooking Dénia's harbor. The rice dishes are the thing to anchor a visit around, the local ingredients doing the arguing that tradition and modernity aren't actually opposites.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A restored country house above the Costa Blanca, where Alberto Ferruz builds tasting menus around whatever the Mediterranean and the Montgó mountains are offering that season. Fish and seafood from the Marina Alta do most of the talking, backed by produce from the chef's own gardens. Two Michelin stars, two menus, and the kind of cooking that makes "sea views" sound like a footnote rather than the main event.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

A hare à la royale with daikon and a cube of foie gras tells you exactly where the chef's head is at: rooted in the Marina Alta but not remotely beholden to it. The restaurant sits inside a resort hotel yet keeps its own entrance and identity, with earth tones and abstract ceiling sculptures giving it an unhurried, slightly otherworldly mood. Nazario Cano runs tasting menus that track local seasons and traditional flavors through a rigorously personal lens.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name nods to the toy factory that once occupied the building, just off the old walled approach to Dénia's castle. This is a tasting-menu restaurant where an Italian chef folds local Marina Alta produce into contemporary Italian cooking, running three menus of varying length and ambition. The result plays seriously with texture and form while keeping the food recognizably Italian at heart, which is either comforting or a magic trick, depending on your expectations.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The walls carry black-and-white photographs of Cullera's seafaring past, which sets the tone for a restaurant that takes its regional roots seriously. The team behind this calm, contemporary dining room passed through Mugaritz and Atrio before landing here, and that background shows up in the rice dishes, dry and soupy, that anchor the menu. The orange crème brûlée has its own reputation.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Michelin-starred spot steps from Arenal beach where the menu doesn't quite exist in the usual sense: daily market specials, especially fresh fish, live outside it entirely, while a seven-course tasting menu anchors the other end. The couple behind it trained with Quique Dacosta, and that Mediterranean foundation gets a quiet northern Spanish inflection throughout. Half-portions are available so the table can graze broadly, which the regulars clearly do.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 30-metre whale sculpture by the road is your landmark, and once past it you're in a bright, contemporary dining room set within an outdoor art park full of palm trees, olive trees, and towering wrought iron figures. The menu reads as a modern Mediterranean spread, with tapas, regional flatbreads, and rice dishes doing the heavy lifting. Book ahead if you want the terrace in summer, which you do.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A one-Michelin-star restaurant set in the Alicante countryside, where the kitchen garden supplies aromatic herbs and edible flowers that land on the plate as the final punctuation. Susi Díaz roots her contemporary Spanish cooking in regional memory, pulling from traditional Alicante recipes and local fish and seafood, then nudging them somewhere unexpected. The room goes urban-contemporary inside a rural setting, which sounds contradictory and somehow isn't.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Fresh fish trucked in daily from a coastal market might seem like an odd flex for a restaurant sitting deep in the Castilian plain, but that supply line is the whole argument at Maralba. It holds two Michelin stars and serves as a love letter to Manchego cooking, with the chef leaning into regional dishes by name while his wife runs the room and the wine list with equal authority. The glass-walled cellar does the decorating.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

A one-Michelin-star restaurant sitting inside a working wine estate, with rows of vines framing every window. The chef runs two tasting menus rooted in the surrounding terroir, drawing from a kitchen garden and local suppliers to make the landscape more or less edible. Pigeon royale and grilled aubergine with Jerusalem artichoke ice cream find their way onto the plate. The wine tour beforehand is less a suggestion than a quiet insistence from everyone who works here.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Named for the local stone woven into its interior, Tosca is a modern Mediterranean restaurant with a terrace that looks out over a canal lined with pleasure boats, which does the atmosphere no harm at all. The kitchen updates classic regional cooking with a light hand, and you can order à la carte or work through one of two tasting menus, the longer of which comes with a wine-pairing option for the whole table.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sits right on the seafront promenade in Xàbia, which means the sunset arrives with your first course whether you ordered it or not. This is a bright, contemporary Mediterranean restaurant built around whatever came off the local auction boats that morning, with rice dishes for two and fideuá as the backbone of the menu. The turbot with pilpil, grilled until the aromas do the persuading, tends to be the one people talk about afterward.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

High ceilings, big windows, and a wash of white give this Elche restaurant a bright, unhurried feel that its regulars seem perfectly comfortable taking for granted. The team behind it keeps things rooted in traditional cooking, nudged toward the contemporary with a Mediterranean accent and a clear preference for local sourcing. Rice and seafood show up as recurring arguments. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The open-view grill is the centerpiece here, not an affectation: this is an old-school family restaurant in a quiet village where the embers do most of the talking. Behind a modest façade the room has been quietly modernized, with a glass-fronted wine cellar and a Michelin Bib Gourmand to show for the effort. Rice with rabbit and snails is the dish that earns its reputation, though the gachamiga and roasted almonds make a strong case for the whole menu.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sitting just outside Yecla near an industrial estate, which is either charmingly unpretentious or a test of conviction depending on your mood, Estirpe is a tasting-menu restaurant where the chef treats his hometown as a culinary crossroads, pulling from the traditions of La Mancha, Alicante, and Murcia at once. Three menus run from seven to eleven courses, and the pre-dessert is named for a local mountain known for cave paintings, which is a lovely way to close a loop.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A cosy little restaurant in the Valencia countryside with a Nordic-inflected feel, where the kitchen runs on whatever the team foraged that morning, herbs and mushrooms included. The menu leans into regional rice dishes, among them a La Mancha gazpacho prepared as rice rather than soup, which takes some explaining and rewards the curiosity. Contemporary touches keep things from feeling like a museum. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A husband-and-wife operation on the road in from Jumilla, where Pere cooks and Pepa runs the room across two rustic-contemporary floors. The draw is rice dishes for two, the kind of inland Alicante cooking that feels like someone's grandmother was involved but made it better. Set menus go to full tables only, which keeps things properly unhurried. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Arrocería Maribel sits right on the canal in El Palmar, a village inside the Albufera natural park where virtually every restaurant serves rice and the competition is fierce. The terrace puts you close enough to the water to feel smug about your table choice. The menu runs both traditional and more contemporary preparations, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand makes it worth seeking out among the many options lining these banks.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Paella ordered at booking time, not from a menu you browse at the table, which tells you exactly the kind of rice-serious operation this is. This beachside arrocería sits between Valencia and the wetlands of La Albufera, with a pool and lounge area for the long, drowsy afternoon that follows a proper Valencian rice lunch. It belongs to the well-regarded Arrocería Maribel family, and the crowd skews toward multigenerational Valencian families doing Sunday the right way.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant