The Best Spanish Food in Spain

A narrow street a few steps from the cathedral, whitewashed walls meeting exposed brick, and a menu that straddles sharing plates and what the kitchen politely calls "small individual bites." La Cábala is a contemporary restaurant in a former taberna, serving regional Castilian cooking with a modern edge. The spider crab ravioli in saffron cream and the Iberian ham croquettes with torrezno popcorn are the kind of details that make a place worth remembering.

A converted sherry bodega in the middle of Jerez, with ceilings tall enough to make you feel underdressed even when you're not. This is a sit-down restaurant with tasting menus built around the wines and sherries of the region, alongside an à la carte that keeps one foot in Andalusian tradition. One menu is a tribute to Lola Flores, which tells you something about the room's sense of drama. The sherry pairings are the whole point.

A single tasting menu, an open kitchen, and a vegetable garden out back that feeds both, run by a couple who seem to know every diner by name. This is a warm, design-forward restaurant in Playa Blanca where the chef, universally known as Colacho, reworks Canarian tradition around whatever the island is actually producing right now. The room is small and unhurried, which is the whole point.

Exposed brick and old ironwork give this casual Basque restaurant a warmer, less ceremonial feel than the fine-dining sibling it shares a kitchen with next door. The menu runs traditional with a modern lean, offered à la carte or across several tasting menus rooted in Basque identity. Ask the server what's available off-menu; the cod cheeks in a traditional fish stew have a way of settling the question of what to order before you've even opened the card.

One chef runs the whole show at this tiny Barcelona restaurant, handling prep, cooking, and table service without any apparent crisis. The menu swings between a tasting format and a seasonal à la carte, both shaped by whatever the market offers. Segovian suckling pig and Maresme peas show up regularly, which tells you the kitchen takes sourcing seriously. A meal here is quiet and personal in a way that larger places tend to promise and rarely deliver.

Lobster au gratin with hollandaise and mushroom duxelle, ordered a day ahead, is the dish that tells you what this Catalan restaurant is about. The chef and his partner left Singapore to open something personal in the Empordà countryside, and the menu follows: daily specials, sharing plates, fish from the Palamós market, and rice dishes and fideuàs for two. Old-school in spirit, with enough modern edge to keep it from feeling like a museum piece.

A large, white-toned traditional restaurant on the Castellana, with a garden-style internal terrace that feels removed from the avenue outside. The cooking runs on Cantabrian instincts, meaning the sea shows up reliably this far inland, from fish soups to whatever came off the boat. The fish soup, served two ways, is the thing regulars circle back for. Think Sunday lunch crowd, unhurried, on the right side of the bill.

Cantabrian cooking holds the room entirely at this airy, contemporary restaurant, one of several López de Hoyos siblings dotted around Madrid. Large windows open the place up to the street, and there's a terrace tucked out back. The kitchen keeps it traditional, leaning on anchovies, squid fried Santander-style, and the kind of mountain stews that remind you Cantabria is very much its own place.

The cheesecake recipe hasn't changed since 1981, and the kitchen sees no reason to start now. La Maruca is a lively, informal restaurant in Velázquez that plants its flag firmly in Cantabria, bringing Santander's fried squid and anchovies to a Madrid dining room dressed up with a few designer touches. The menu is straightforwardly traditional, built on good sourcing rather than clever technique, with hake coming straight from the fish auction.

Twelve seats at the bar and one surprise tasting menu, so booking ahead is less a suggestion than a rule. Chef Víctor Conus builds the menu around whatever Galician ingredients look good that day, pulling in produce from his own kitchen garden and the Andalucian charcuterie his family makes in Huelva. The ham arrives first, every time, without asking. That kind of place.

The aesthetic leans hard into the Strait of Gibraltar, which is an unexpected decorating choice for a bistro on the Castellana, but the food makes the argument. This is a casual, sharing-plates spot where the kitchen blends Cádiz coastal cooking with Japanese and Latin American influences, the kind of menu where dogfish ends up in a saam and tuna gets a roasted chili and tomato chutney. Informal, unhurried, and selected by the Michelin Guide.

A chalet-style roadside building on the N-III that looks modest from the highway and turns out to be the go-to dining room for the Utiel-Requena wine country. The family runs it together, with one half in the kitchen and the other working the floor, and the cooking stays close to home: Spanish classics, local recipes, and the kind of rice dishes, arroz al senyoret, lobster paella, that take patience to do properly.

A country house restaurant in Tegueste where the dining room looks out over open landscape and the kitchen does the same toward you. The menu wanders confidently from Canarian classics to Japanese and Peruvian touches, with grilled meats as the backbone. The team also organizes themed days around mushrooms, truffles, and game, which is either charming or exactly the kind of thing you'd drive into the hills for.

The mantra here is "taste the unexpected," which a contemporary restaurant in a coastal Spanish town can either earn or merely print on menus. La Suculenta earns it by pairing familiar Spanish touchstones, croquetas, glass prawns, rice dishes made to order, with the kind of modern technique that keeps things interesting without announcing itself. Small plates anchor the à la carte, and a handful of set menus cover weekday lunches through leisurely weekend spreads.

A tucked-away Spanish restaurant just off the Gran Vía where the kitchen follows the market rather than any particular trend. The menu leans into seasonal, recognizable ingredients without making a fuss about it, and the steak tartare has developed something of a reputation on the Madrid dining circuit. Fits the classic tasca template in feel, but the cooking has clearly been thought about. The kind of place locals keep quiet about, then mention anyway.

A panoramic restaurant on Lanzarote where the dining room view competes with whatever arrives on the plate, and the kitchen is happy to let both win. The chef, a local, runs through set menus that pull Canarian cooking into modern territory without losing sight of the island's larder. The cellar doubles as a dining curiosity, housing local cheeses and an aged Arehucas rum barrel you can actually visit.

Salt-crusted beef tenderloin carved tableside is the kind of showmanship that earns repeat visits, and La Terraza de Alba leans into it. This is a modern Spanish restaurant where traditional flavors get a careful update, and the menu is built for lingering: half portions on most dishes, a dedicated section for bluefin tuna, and rice dishes served for two. A private room off the side handles the corporate lunch crowd quietly, leaving the main room to everyone else.

A family restaurant tucked into a small country hotel in the Bierzo hills, where the son pours and talks wine, the daughter cooks alongside her father, and the mother holds the room together. The menu moves between à la carte and a tasting format, with contemporary cooking that keeps local Bercian ingredients close. The kind of place where the homeliness is structural, not performed.

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.

A historic building in a tiny Galician village, carefully restored and hiding a restaurant inside that feels like a genuine secret. The young team cooks contemporary Spanish food rooted in local territory and collective memory, with a fixed-price menu plus two tasting options topping out at fourteen courses. The drive through the countryside to get there is half the point; the cooking through the door is the other half.

The name means "calm" in Basque, which sets expectations the room apparently takes seriously. This is a trad-rooted fine dining spot on a narrow street near the river in central Bilbao, running a weekday lunch set menu alongside two longer tasting menus that dig into regional cooking and old flavors. It draws a crowd that books ahead, because you have to: the place fills up fast and stays that way.

A single tasting menu anchors this contemporary Spanish restaurant tucked into Seville's old quarter near Plaza de la Gavidia. The name nods to a traditional gathering place for Andalusian trades, which sets the tone: the young team is fixated on Southern Spain, sourcing Iberian ham, white prawns, and local honey before weaving them through delicate broths and a kitchen that treats texture as seriously as flavor.

Open fireplaces and the whitewashed feel of a Menorcan farmhouse are doing a lot of work on the outskirts of Valladolid, which is not where you'd expect to find them. This is a modern Spanish restaurant where the kitchen takes traditional Castilian cooking and quietly rearranges it, running aged beef and slow-braised tripe alongside Albufera rice dishes that feel genuinely at home here. The room leans romantic, so dress accordingly.

Rice cooked over orange wood and vine shoots is the reason to understand this Spanish restaurant in Valencia. It's the project of celebrity chef Quique Dacosta, with an open kitchen and a menu built around serious cured ingredients and a seasonal tasting option. A few dishes are finished tableside, which feels theatrical until you realize the food earns the attention. The room leans convivial rather than hushed.

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.

A Valencian couple running a rice-specialist restaurant in the Castilian highlands is exactly as surprising as it sounds. The chef finished in the top five at the International Paella Valenciana de Sueca competition, and the menu reads like proof, with paellas and rice dishes built around bluefin tuna, scarlet prawns, and partridge with truffle. Grilled fish and shellfish starters round things out for anyone who wandered in expecting roast lamb.

The Manchego cheesecake has apparently won awards on its own, which tells you something about how seriously this family-run restaurant takes its region. Two brothers run the room, one front, one back, and the kitchen leans into Castilian hunting traditions while keeping the cooking creative. Meals open with small bites and sharing plates before things get properly serious. A solid find in central Talavera de la Reina.

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.

A Japanese kamado grill doing the heavy lifting at a Valencian bistro is a combination that took confidence to commit to. Chef Lester López, shaped by kitchens in Guatemala, the Canary Islands, and the Basque Country, runs a short, honest menu of grilled meats and fish, Mediterranean small plates, and cocas pulled from the oven while you watch. The room feels like someone's kitchen on a good night.

A short walk from Retiro park, this contemporary dining room is where a chef trained under the legendary Juan Mari Arzak runs an international menu with a Basque undercurrent. The format is generous: most dishes come available as half-plates, good for grazing across the card. The chef tends to wander the room mid-service to check in, which feels less like a gimmick and more like someone who genuinely can't help himself.

A 19th-century mansion that once produced vinegar now houses this creative tasting-menu restaurant, and the team leans into that history with a dedication to acidic notes that runs through almost every sauce on the table. The cooking is rooted in seasonal Granada-region ingredients, and the escabeches in particular carry real conviction. One set menu, though they'll trim it by two courses if you ask nicely.

A stone house in medieval Allariz that once held a century-old restaurant now serves contemporary tasting menus named for a river and the Galician word for its murmur, a nod to a Rosalía de Castro poem. The chef, a Madrid native with deep summer roots here, works with small local producers and draws the menu's arc from the gentle and occasionally wild moods of the nearby River Arnoia. Two menus, short or long, with wine pairing available for both.

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.

A farmhouse restaurant a short drive from Vic, where the stone-and-timber setting comes with a glass-fronted terrace and a menu that leans into Catalan tradition without getting stuck there. The kitchen runs under the influence of Nandu Jubany, and daily specials shift the whole thing toward something more alive. The duck glazed with heather honey and a rum baba finished tableside both make a case for lingering longer than you planned.

A gourmet beach shack perched between two Galician beaches with the island of Ons sitting on the horizon, which is either deeply unfair or exactly what you came to Galicia for. The glass-fronted dining room and terrace both give you the view, and the kitchen leans into traditional regional cooking with a modern edge, leaning on the open grill and a menu section devoted to rice and fideuá dishes.

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.

The owner's wine cellar doubles as a tasting room, and she's been known to bring guests down to pick their own bottle. This old-school Galician restaurant sits in a traditional stone house in Vilalba, with a bar and bodega on the ground floor and a rustic dining room above. The menu follows the seasons, leaning toward wild mushrooms and game, the kind of partridge-and-venison cooking that feels like the countryside just walked in.

Fish priced by weight on a short menu is usually a sign you're somewhere the kitchen trusts what it's selling. This easygoing restaurant sits in the pedestrianized old quarter of Puerto de Vega, a coastal town pretty enough to justify the detour on its own. The chef runs the room as much as the kitchen, coming out to talk to guests, and the cooking leans on local products and traditional recipes without making a fuss about either.

A pedestrian street in Teruel's old quarter is an unlikely address for a restaurant built around Balfegó tuna and locally raised Wagyu beef, but here we are. Método is a contemporary dining room with fusion leanings, where the à la carte leans hard on those two ingredients and a tasting menu traces the tuna from cut to cut, hot and cold. The kitchen takes its plating seriously, which you will notice immediately.

A contemporary dining room inside an old two-storey house, right where the Arco de la Estrella opens into Cáceres's medieval walled city. The menu leans into Extremaduran tradition, with migas, local Retinta beef, and Torta del Casar cheese all making appearances. A tasting menu called Las Niñas runs alongside the à la carte, named for the chef father the owner-daughters are clearly proud of.

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.

The rear dining room looks out over the Parque Natural de Las Batuecas-Sierra de Francia, which is reason enough to ask for a table there. This old-school restaurant in the medieval village of Mogarraz has been around forever, its stone facade blending into the surroundings as if it never considered doing otherwise. The kitchen runs traditional Spanish, stews and roasted meats doing the heavy lifting, with a tasting menu if you'd rather leave the decisions to someone else.

Two long communal tables in the old quarter of A Coruña, steps from the yacht club, sum up the whole aesthetic at NaDo: spare, modern, and very deliberate. The open kitchen and the chef circling between it and the room keep things theatrical without trying. The cooking is creative Galician, rooted in the Atlantic, and the set menu hands all the choosing to the kitchen, which at least saves an argument.

The owner still buys the hake and tuna personally at the fish auctions in Celeiro and Burela, which tells you something about how a family-run seafood restaurant inside a hotel on the Galician coast actually operates. The terrace looks out over sea, beach, and mountains simultaneously, which feels slightly unfair to everywhere else. Order whatever came off the boat that morning and let the kitchen sort out the details.

Near the port in Ferrol, this modern restaurant takes its name from the nickname everyone has for the owner, "El Inglés," though the food runs decidedly global. The à la carte is rooted in Galician cooking with detours through Peru, Japan, and Italy, and the open kitchen keeps things easy to watch. A tasting menu is available with advance notice, and half portions let you cover a lot of ground without committing.

A manor house in the Monterrei wine country doubles as the dining room here, and the kitchen runs on a simple philosophy: product first, technique second. Chef José Luis Prieto offers a short à la carte alongside a few tasting menus, all rooted in the Galician and Orense traditions of the surrounding land. It's a family operation, so the welcome feels less like a restaurant and more like someone's very talented relative learned to cook.

A pig drinking at a bar, its name tattooed on the animal's side, greets you at this sleek contemporary restaurant near the Guggenheim. The menu is devoted almost entirely to pork, with two tasting formats to choose from, one of which lets the chef propose the starters while you pick the main. The cooking leans Basque, the room is precise and modern, and the whole thing is funnier and more confident than the concept has any right to be.

You enter through a corridor lined with cookbooks, which sets the tone for a restaurant that takes its references seriously. Alberto Chicote's contemporary dining room sits in a converted workshop, with an open kitchen planted in the centre of the room. The cooking runs Spanish at the core with a Far Eastern lean, served across a choice of tasting menus. The whole staff wears a bracelet modelled on one a Masai tribe gave Chicote, which is either very moving or very on-brand, depending on your table.

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.

Palacio Ico sits inside a restored historic property in Teguise, where the old Canarian stonework sets a mood that the kitchen then tries to live up to. It's a tasting menu restaurant, short version or long, both built around ingredients sourced by island and producer: octopus from Lanzarote, prawns from La Santa, the local black pig. The wine cellar leans hard into champagne, which nobody seems to be complaining about.

A big communal table anchors the bare-concrete dining room tucked behind an unremarkable door in Santiago's old quarter. The chef calls it "cocina de barrio," neighbourhood cooking, and means it: homemade empanadas, escabeches, stews, and whatever came off the boat that morning. The kind of place where the food tastes like someone's grandmother made it, which is exactly the point.

A vine-covered patio tucked into the center of Lugo sets the scene at this contemporary restaurant, where the sourcing is taken seriously, from small organic growers to farms where the animals are treated well. The menu runs from Galician classics to gyozas, which sounds like it shouldn't work and somehow does. Tapas, a tasting menu, and à la carte options mean you can stay as long as you like, and in this town, you probably will.

The chef named the restaurant after himself, which either signals confidence or a grandmother who wouldn't let him call it anything else. This contemporary dining room inside the Eunice Hotel Gastronómico runs on what the kitchen calls purist cuisine, chasing seasonal Castilian produce and respecting cooking times the way a monk respects silence. You order à la carte or choose a tasting menu, and either way the food sits somewhere between tradition and the chef's own instincts.

A restaurant set inside a working winery in the Ribeiro, where the wine practically pours itself. The kitchen leans contemporary with deep Galician roots, and the tasting menus move through local seafood and the occasional odd-couple pairing, like egg with fried pig's ear, that somehow makes complete sense. Wine pairing is available throughout, which, given the address, would be rude to skip.

A colorful house on the banks of the Nalón river, a few miles outside Oviedo, where the chef puts Asturias on a plate with the kind of quiet confidence that doesn't need explaining. Two tasting menus anchor the dining room: one rooted in tradition, one that nudges old flavors into modern shapes. Panoramic river views come with it, and a terrace for anyone who wants to eat with a little weather involved.

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.

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.

The green azulejos and thick esparto blinds give Polea's facade an arresting look before you're even inside. This contemporary restaurant runs a single tasting menu built around seasonal, locally sourced ingredients, with nods to Scandinavian technique and, occasionally, the kitchen's own garden. Sustainably caught fish only. The partially open kitchen and small bar keep things intimate, and a couple runs the whole operation with the kind of calm focus that takes years abroad to develop.

A tapas bar and restaurant hybrid steps from the Retiro's Puerta del Niño Jesús, with Andalucian roots running through a contemporary small-plates menu. The tasting menus are called "Lo Que Diga Willy," or What Willy Says, which tells you something about the chef's self-confidence. The gilda, that classic olive-anchovy-pepper tapa, gets its own quiet reinvention here and tends to be the thing people mention on the way out.

A family with deep roots in Murcia's restaurant scene, now with a younger generation quietly rewriting the menu. This intimate modern Spanish restaurant runs both à la carte and a tasting menu, with the kitchen leaning hard into local vegetables and Murcian tradition, then nudging both somewhere more interesting. The room feels warmly old-school; the plates do not.

A glass-fronted porch dining room looks out over the Cantabrian countryside, and the other room leans rustic stone and timber, so you pick your mood at the door. This is a family-run restaurant where traditional regional recipes have been quietly modernized by the son of the house, who took over and adjusted things by degrees. The Michelin Guide has it on their list. If you need somewhere to sleep, there are a handful of rooms and apartments on the same property.

The name means "sauce" in Galician, which telegraphs the kitchen's priorities pretty clearly. This tapas bar in Lugo's old quarter runs an extensive à la carte built around the grill, with serious beef cuts and whole fish doing most of the talking. The upstairs dining room has a rustic feel, quotes from Galician writers on the walls, and an aging cabinet that signals the team's patience. Daily specials round out a menu the chef describes as "celebration, abundance, satisfaction."

The house cocktail has a backstory: in 1967 it took a Spanish championship and a runner-up at the World Cocktail Championship. Order it first. This contemporary Spanish restaurant sits on the ground floor of a hotel wedged between the bullring and Muelle Uno, and the menu riffs on Malaga classics, local seafood among them, without losing the plot. A tapas option keeps things casual if you'd rather graze than commit.

A dedicated ham carver works a corner of this two-floor traditional Spanish restaurant on Velázquez, which sets the tone nicely. The room leans into bourgeois comfort, all dark wood and vintage details, with a proper wine cellar and a bar for classic cocktails. The kitchen draws on Catalan family recipes, cooked with enough confidence that the menu feels rooted rather than dusty. The rum baba with whipped cream is the move at dessert.

A Galician restaurant on the wooded banks of the Támega river, where the kitchen leans into the Monterrei region's own pantry, organic veal and seasonal chestnuts among them, and folds traditional technique into something a little more current. The set menus range from a short weekday lunch to longer, memory-driven formats, and the à la carte runs alongside them. Good country-road-drive energy, if you're in the Ourense orbit.