The Best Places in Spain

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.

Two bar counters divide the dining room, one cold, one hot, both leaning east. Mantis is a casual restaurant in L'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample with an industrial fit-out and a menu that drifts freely between Asian technique and Catalan instinct. The team keeps things concise, with a midday formula and a longer tasting menu for when you're in no hurry. A Michelin Selected Restaurant, and very much the neighbourhood's open secret.

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 glass floor with a water feature separates the ground-floor tapas bar from the more formal dining room upstairs, which tells you Marcela takes its staging seriously. The kitchen leans on market ingredients, with a sirloin Wellington that regulars seem to treat as non-negotiable. It sits steps from the Casa Botines, and on weekends live music drifts in from its partnership with the city auditorium.

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 staircase leads up to a black-and-gold dining room with a glassed-in wine cellar and, if you look closely, quiet nods to the animated film "Up." This contemporary tasting-menu restaurant in central Jerez runs on locally sourced ingredients with international inflection, and the kitchen's tribute to a local baker tells you something about how seriously the team takes its suppliers. The Michelin Guide has selected it.

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.

Two partners from the Dominican Republic running a Japanese izakaya in a small Catalan fishing town sounds like a premise, but the food is the punchline that lands. The menu moves from nigiri and sashimi into sushi rolls and robata-grilled plates, with a Katshu Sando that fuses Dominican smoked pork with tonkatsu sauce. Casual and relaxed, the kind of place where the owners still remember your order.

Peruvian restaurant on the 19th floor of the Grand Hyatt Barcelona, with a panoramic terrace that makes the city feel like a side dish. Chef Omar Malpartida works with Mediterranean produce to cook across Peru's coast, mountains, and jungle, so the menu moves from ceviches to grilled dishes to shareable plates without any obvious logic except that it keeps working. The room is designed to evoke a jungle hut, which at this altitude is either absurd or perfect.

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 contemporary Mediterranean restaurant inside a golf-club clubhouse, which sounds like a punchline until the food arrives. Two chefs named Pablo run the kitchen together, turning out dishes that move between French and Asian influences without losing the Mediterranean thread. Tasting menus run from a tight three-course format up to eight courses with wine pairings, or you can order à la carte if commitment feels like too much.

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 terrace on the slopes of Gibralfaro hill with the city and the Mediterranean laid out below is a hard opening act to follow, yet the kitchen keeps up. This is a small-plates restaurant where the chef treats Málaga as a city that has always absorbed outside ideas, mixing local produce with global influences across a menu that moves from Andalusian cheese to yuzu without breaking a sweat. A tasting menu runs alongside the à la carte.

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.

Four seats at the bar put you close enough to watch the chef explain every move, which is either the menu or the whole point, depending on your mood. This is a small, informal bistro on Paseo de Mallorca where a Brazilian-born chef channels years in Barcelona into a tight, grill-forward menu rooted in traditional Spanish cooking. The room is relaxed, the cooking is not.

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.

The walls here are deliberately left chipped, because the room has stories to tell. Nacha is a bistro with an Argentine and Mediterranean soul, sharing plates designed around grilled meats but not defined by them. It sits across from the CondeDuque culture center in a former old café, all slender wrought iron columns and a vintage air nobody had to manufacture. The short menu leans Spanish and Argentine, with detours elsewhere kept sensible.

Fish pulled from the local market, vegetables from nearby gardens, and meats from the Castellón interior: the chef at this minimalist Mediterranean restaurant in Vinaròs lets the sourcing do the talking. The room is spare by design, so nothing distracts from a tasting menu that moves between coast and countryside in a way that makes the geography feel like the actual concept.

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 name is Dorian spelled backwards, a nod to the chef's son that sets the tone for a place with a personality. This bistro-style spot in the Eixample runs on market cooking, with the kitchen leaning hard into fish and, when the season allows, game: hare, venison, partridge, and pigeon that regulars tend to plan around. The room is small and contemporary, and the vibe is intimate without trying too hard about it.

Nacho Manzano, the Asturian chef behind the Michelin-starred Casa Marcial, runs this traditional restaurant inside a stone country palace ringed by meadows and the Picos de Europa. The menu leans on regional cooking, with dishes drawn from the Casa Marcial playbook but grounded in the local larder. An old mill on the property still grinds cornflour, which ends up in the cornmeal fritters that open the meal.

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.

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.

A neighborhood spot on a quiet Barcelona street where the chef builds his modern tasting menu almost entirely around small local producers, which sounds like a marketing line until you taste how different it makes the food. There's à la carte if you prefer, but the tasting menu is where the kitchen is clearly having fun, pairing things that shouldn't quite work together until they do.

A female mannequin, rock-and-roll memorabilia, and ceramic plates the owners made themselves set the tone at this family-run restaurant in El Sauzal, tucked beside the old church. The menu changes weekly, chasing whatever the market has, so the kitchen might land anywhere from amberjack sashimi to squid lasagne. Everything is built for sharing, which suits the relaxed terrace perfectly.

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.

The dining rooms lean into a retro Italian pop aesthetic from the 1970s, all considered and a little theatrical. This contemporary Italian restaurant in Recoletos is run by a chef from Puglia who steers well clear of the pasta-and-pizza comfort zone, cooking his way through Italy's regions with some seriousness. The set menu called "From South to North" does roughly what it says. A room that knows what it is, which is rarer than it sounds.

The lareira, a traditional Galician hearth, does double duty here: heating the stone dining room and smoking whatever came off the local farms and boats that morning. This is a rural restaurant tucked into a village quiet enough that the car park has gates to keep livestock in. Tasting menus lean on Galician tradition without apology, and the drive out, however far it feels, is entirely the point.

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.

From the upper part of Fisterra, this modern Galician restaurant looks straight out over the port, the estuary, and Langosteira beach, which means the view changes with the tide and so does what's on the menu. The kitchen follows the fish auction closely, and almost everything, from the sharing plates to the ten-course tasting menu, is built around seafood and organic vegetables. Save room: the spread of artisanal Galician cheeses with homemade bread is the kind of footnote that upstages the main text.

The sticks poking out of the Arousa estuary just beyond the windows mark the clam beds, which tells you everything about what ends up on the plate at this low-key seafood restaurant in Carril. The room is rustic but not fussy, and there's a terrace and a coveted table inside the kitchen. The menu is short and unsentimental, built around whatever the water gives up, with a tasting menu if you want the full tour.

A couple who left restaurant kitchens elsewhere in Spain to restore her grandmother's farmhouse in rural Galicia, growing their own vegetables and running a small vegetarian restaurant built around a single seasonal menu. The setting is quiet countryside, the cooking is contemporary and confident, and the whole project has the feel of people doing exactly what they meant to do, which is rarer than it sounds.

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.

Tucked inside Hotel Can Ferrereta in Santanyí's old town, Ocre is a Mediterranean restaurant that moves to a candlelit Mallorcan patio in summer, which does most of the selling on its own. The cooking is straightforward and seasonal, the kitchen drawing from local suppliers and, on Saturdays, from the weekly market a few streets away. The room leans rustic without trying too hard, and the crowd tends toward the quietly romantic rather than the loudly celebratory.

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.

A tiny Mediterranean tasting-menu restaurant near Sants station that seats exactly eight people, so the chef basically knows your name before you arrive. Ezequiel Devoto, Buenos Aires-born, named the place for his home district there, and the cooking moves freely between Argentina, Spain, and Italy without making a fuss about it. The room is discreet enough that it's easy to walk past, which keeps it feeling like a quiet discovery. Book ahead, obviously.

A sushi bar on A Coruña's showpiece main square, where the menu changes daily based on what the chef picks up at auction that morning. The room is stripped back to almost nothing, just counter seating and a fish-aging cabinet doing quiet, visible work. One tasting menu, take it or leave it, with a few extras if you want to push further. Reservations go through the website, so plan accordingly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tucked into a residential pocket north of Palma, Óseo is a modern tasting-menu restaurant where the kitchen leans hard into Mediterranean-Mallorcan ingredients and lets the seasons do the arguing. Two menus, five or nine courses, and a chef who treats stuffed partridge with the same seriousness as smoked aubergine. The kind of place that feels personal rather than programmatic, which in a dining scene full of scenic terraces is a different kind of ambition.

Chef John Ordóñez runs a creative restaurant on Aribau where the desserts alone tend to come up in conversation afterward. The setup is relaxed and unfussy, with extra seating upstairs, and the cooking plays with unexpected aromas without losing sight of the individual ingredients. You can order à la carte or pick a set menu sized to your appetite. The kind of place that makes Barcelona's casual dining scene look very good at its job.

The bar here is the main event, where glass chambers display fish mid-maturation, aging toward the nigiris they'll eventually become. This Japanese restaurant in Chamberí imports much of its seafood and builds an extensive à la carte around jukusei, the Japanese practice of carefully aging fish to deepen flavor. A wood-lined dining room sits behind it all, but most serious eaters want the counter. Tasting menus are available for the full commitment crowd.

Industrial-chic dining room in Barrio de Salamanca with a social conscience baked in, not bolted on. Ovillo is part of a foundation that brings vulnerable young people into professional kitchens, which gives the contemporary tasting menu format a slightly different weight than usual. The cooking runs from snappy mini-appetisers through to longer tasting menus, and the tripe with haricot beans has its own small legend among offal enthusiasts.

Authentic Sicilian pottery lines the shelves, which sets the tone before a single plate arrives. This small, contemporary Italian restaurant is a Madrid offshoot of an original in Palermo, and the kitchen leans into that southern Italian lineage, reworking traditional recipes with a modern eye. Both the à la carte and tasting menus come with optional wine pairings, so you can commit to the full Sicilian afternoon whether or not you planned to.

Landlocked Valladolid isn't where you'd expect to eat seriously good seafood, but Paco Espinosa has been quietly making that case for a long time. The front tapas bar does brisk work, while the dining room runs a proper à la carte with Iberian ham, home-style stews, and fish and shellfish that travel better than they have any right to. The wine list reaches past Spain, which in a room this comfortable feels almost unnecessary.

A bistro in the informal, rustic-chic register where the menu refuses to pick a lane between Spain, Peru, and Mexico, which turns out to be the whole point. The team behind this sharing-plates spot layers those three kitchens into dishes sized so you can graze widely rather than commit. Half-portions are available, which is a rare act of mercy. The executive menu runs Tuesday through Thursday for anyone who prefers a set path through the chaos.

The dining room sits in the straw loft of an old Catalan farmhouse ringed by rice fields, which tells you most of what you need to know before you've touched the menu. This is a family-run restaurant where rice is the serious business: the kitchen grows its own Carnaloli variety when the drought cooperates, and the rice dishes are the reason regulars make the drive to Pals. An à la carte of traditional Spanish cooking, a tasting menu, and daily specials round out the options.

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 short walk from Playa del Orzán, this contemporary seafood spot in A Coruña takes its cues from the same kitchen philosophy as Morrofino de Vigo: shareable plates built around serious Galician seafood, handled with a light, modern touch. The menu is designed for the table to eat together, which either sounds very convivial or like a negotiation, depending on who you bring. Either way, the ocean is the whole point here.

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.

Eight seats, one seating, everyone starts together: Playing Solo runs like a small theater where the kitchen is the stage. Chef Luis Caballero cooks Japanese-inflected fusion with detours through France and Scandinavia, all built on local ingredients, at a counter inspired by the izakaya format. The seasonal tasting menu is the only real option, and the room fills and empties as one, which somehow makes strangers feel less strange.

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 wooden counter running through the dining room is where the chef works, finishes dishes tableside, and occasionally holds court. This is a casual Catalan bistro with a local-first ethos, though the menu quietly pulls in Asian influences where it feels right. Sea cucumbers and teardrop peas show up when the season allows, and the daily suggestions change depending on what arrived that morning. The kind of place where the kitchen has nothing to hide behind.