The Best Seafood Near La Cartería, by the Record

Live tanks near the entrance mean your turbot is swimming until you order it, priced by weight the way serious fish restaurants do things. La Bombi is an old-school Santander institution, a small-bar-up-front, several-dining-rooms-behind kind of place in the Puertochico district that keeps its focus squarely on what the sea delivers. Top-quality meats appear on the menu for those who ask, but the seafood is clearly why people keep coming back.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name comes from a black crab that clings to the docks of the Puertochico district, which tells you something about how seriously this seafood restaurant takes its neighborhood. The bar up front runs loud and busy with tapas and raciones, a fish display sprawls beside a live lobster tank, and a calmer dining room sits behind it all. The rice dishes lean hard toward the sea, and the pan-cooked clams have a following.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A husband-and-wife seafood spot on the Cantabrian coast where the menu follows whatever came off the local boats that morning. The starters lean into the sea hard, scallops and sea urchins and grilled octopus arriving before the kitchen moves to large cuts of wild fish and two rice dishes worth planning around. Seating is tight and the place fills fast, so a reservation is less a suggestion than a quiet necessity.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Nets, ropes, and weathered wood set the mood at this old-school family seafood restaurant directly across from the local market in San Vicente de la Barquera. Fish and shellfish are priced by weight, mariscadas arrive for the table to share, and the rice with lobster has been the house calling card for so long the family is credited with putting it on the map. Save room for the cream millefeuille, which earns its reputation quietly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant