The Best Places in Spain

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 couple's restaurant in the truest sense: one half runs the kitchen, the other runs the room, and the whole project feels like proof that having your own place changes how food tastes. It's a casual, share-plates spot near the Municipal Theatre, where the menu shifts with whatever's seasonal and leans into local flavours. The wine list favours small producers and moves just as often as the food does.

The open grill in the dining room is the first thing you notice, and it explains a lot about what follows. PUCHE is a relaxed, sharing-plates restaurant in a stone-and-brick building on the square, with an open kitchen and a tiny bar counter for those who want a front-row seat. The cooking leans on Catalan ingredients and tradition, with off-menu market options that change without warning. The Palamós red prawns, dressed with a vinaigrette made from their own heads, are the kind of detail that earns the trip.

An open kitchen faces the dining room so you can watch the fire do most of the work, which tells you everything about Nandu Jubany's farm-to-table restaurant near Passeig de Gràcia. The cooking leans on charcoal and salt rather than technique for its own sake, letting the raw ingredients carry the weight. Bar seats fill up with people ordering half portions to cover more ground, which is the move.

A sushi restaurant tucked into an annex of the Puente Romano hotel, run by an Argentine sushiman whose specialty is aged and cured fish. The room splits into two: The Lounge has low tables and sharing plates, while the Omakase Bar is quieter and reserved for the chef's tasting menu, plated in front of you. The sommelier focuses on sake, which is either very niche or exactly what you needed to know.

The lobster section alone takes up half a page, offered grilled, stewed, with chickpeas, or folded into rice, and it requires at least two of you to order it. This Valencian Mediterranean restaurant near El Retiro leans hard into seafood starters, fideuá, and serious grilled dishes, with French notes threading through quietly. The kind of place that makes a long lunch feel like the obvious choice.

The dining room occupies the old stables of a grand mansion, and the garden patio beyond it is reason enough to book. This Mediterranean restaurant inside the Sant Francesc Hotel Singular leans into Mallorcan ingredients and local cooking traditions, with both an à la carte and a tasting menu most evenings, and rice dishes taking over on Sunday lunch, which feels exactly right.

A family restaurant that quietly added "3.0" to its old name when the third generation took over, which is a more honest way of handling inherited ambition than most places manage. It sits in Hostalric with Montseny mountain views and serves contemporary Catalan cooking that rotates with the seasons. Several set menus run at different price points, and the à la carte rice dishes cooked in the traditional tin pan have their fans among the regulars.

The Venezuelan chef behind this informal Las Palmas restaurant pulls local Canarian ingredients into a orbit that includes Mexico, Japan, and the Caribbean without ever losing the thread. It's a modern fusion spot with a shareable-plates sensibility, the kind of room where the menu reads like a well-traveled notebook. Dishes like the rabbit escabeche and sea bass aguachile do most of the convincing on their own.

Peppa Pig hangs on the wall and the bathroom is called the Pocilga, which sets the tone for this small bistro near Plaza de las Salesas. The kitchen opens straight into the narrow dining room, with a chef's bar up front so you can watch things come together. The menu rotates with the seasons and pulls from cuisines across the world, mixing techniques and flavors without committing to any single tradition.

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.

The menu categories at this contemporary Spanish restaurant are named after royal hunts and noble courts, which makes sense once you know the chef built the whole concept around the court of Philip V. Sitting beside the Parador in La Granja, the dining room takes its cues from the Royal Palace next door. The tasting menus require a reservation heads-up, and the à la carte keeps things more flexible for those who just wandered in from the gardens.

On the road up to Mt Igueldo, this old-school Basque restaurant has the weathered exterior of a countryside inn and a dining room that quietly undercuts your expectations. The kitchen leans on tradition, baked crab and hake in parsley sauce among the anchors, but keeps one foot moving forward with more composed, seasonal plates. The wine list runs deep enough that even seasoned regulars find something to chase down.

A renovated house with enough history that a famous Spanish poet once slept here, now running as a regional restaurant with an à la carte and a handful of set menus. Vegetables lead the way, most of them sourced from the river-hugging market gardens of Tudela's Mejana growing area, which the kitchen has relied on for years. A separate dining room called El Choko de Remigio handles the more seasonal, locally focused end of things.

A restored farmhouse tucked among the vineyards of the Escoda-Sanahuja winery, one of Catalonia's pioneering natural wine producers. This is a Mediterranean restaurant where the chef, Russian-born and clearly converted, builds an à la carte and tasting menu around organic produce, much of it grown on the farm itself. The kitchen and the cellar are in obvious conversation, and the cheese menu is the kind of detail that makes you glad you asked.

The kitchen garden by the hotel entrance supplies much of what lands on your plate here, a contemporary tasting-menu restaurant inside an eco-resort just outside Barcelona. Three set menus, each built around certified organic, seasonal produce sourced from local farmers and that garden, trace the surrounding landscape course by course. The whole table commits to one menu, which feels less like a rule and more like the point.

Stone walls thick enough to keep out the Canarian sun anchor the dining room at this casual restaurant in the historic Vegueta district, a few steps from the Casa de Colón. The kitchen casts wide, pulling from Spain, France, Italy, and beyond, and the portions are the kind that make you reconsider the afternoon you had planned. A Michelin Selected pick for the neighborhood.

A modern bistro tucked inside a tennis club in a quiet residential neighborhood, which sets the tone for everything that follows. The name is a tennis pun, the cooking is casual in spirit but serious in execution, and the gap between those two things is where it gets interesting. The tasting menu leans creative and precise, while the room stays genuinely relaxed, the kind of place that has strong opinions about what it's doing without making you feel it.

A trattoria tucked near Las Palmas's old literary quarter, Rígolo is built around the idea of cooking the way someone's grandmother would, if that grandmother also imported her cheeses and charcuterie from small Italian producers. The chef spent years under Nacho Manzano before channeling that experience into handmade pasta and slow, regional Italian cooking with the odd Canarian twist keeping things honest.

A family restaurant in the Salamanca countryside that grows its own vegetables and organises whole-tuna days, with fish hauled up from the port of Barbate and broken down on the premises. The dining rooms mix wood and cement in a way that feels deliberate without being fussy. Traditional stews, roasts, and a serious commitment to Iberian pork fill the menu, alongside fresh fish priced by weight, which is the honest way to do it.

The cheese trolley and tableside carving set the tone before the food even arrives. This is a quietly serious Asturian restaurant on the edge of town, where the kitchen leans into the region rather than away from it, pulling fish from a trusted local supplier and giving traditional cooking a careful modern nudge. The tasting menu runs long; the à la carte is the more relaxed way in. A couple runs the room, one per side of the kitchen pass.

The ox chop from El Capricho, a farm in León with a cult following among serious meat people, is the main reason to sit down at this traditional grill in the Salamanca district. A terrace, a wood-fired focus, and a menu that also makes room for grilled fish, seasonal vegetables, and rice dishes keep it from being a one-trick pony. Occasional full-day events built around a single ingredient, oxtail lately, give regulars a reason to come back.

The name comes from the Basque word for a log, which tells you something about how seriously this creative tasting-menu restaurant takes its place in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve. Set inside a farmhouse hotel a few kilometers outside Bermeo, with valley and sea views through the windows, the chef builds each seasonal menu from the surrounding ecosystem, much of it grown on-site. Over thirty txakolis from Bizkaia make the drink list worth your full attention.

Stone walls, heavy wood, and a family running the room with the kind of quiet attentiveness that doesn't come from a training manual. This is a regional restaurant in a small Cantabrian town, built around zero-mile sourcing and three tasting menus named for local caves. The cooking is rooted in tradition with a lighter contemporary hand, and the soups and stews, pinto beans with venison among them, are the sort of thing you think about on the drive home.

The wood-heavy dining room, dressed like a South American hacienda that took the brief seriously, sets the tone for what follows: a grill-focused restaurant where the fire does most of the talking. Angus and Wagyu cuts arrive in Brazilian, Argentine, and European configurations, and the terrace, shaded by actual trees, is the kind of outdoor room that makes Madrid's long evenings feel well-spent.

The Josper grill, the Basque parrilla, and the Castilian wood oven all get a turn here, which tells you this is a serious meat restaurant with a clear point of view. Rafa Zafra, known for his seafood-focused Estimar, pivoted hard to land, and the menu runs from Joselito cured ham to game to barbecued pinchos. The room is dim and urban-cool, the wine list is deep, and the crowd skews people who know exactly what they've ordered before sitting down.

More than 3,000 Granada-style ceramic jugs hang from the ceiling of this traditional Spanish restaurant in the foothills outside the city, which is either charming or mildly alarming depending on your relationship with gravity. The Pedraza family has been running it forever, and the Mudejar-inspired building, the extensive classic à la carte, and a wine cellar worth a detour have made it a proper institution across the province.

A farmhouse south of Sant Lluís that started life as a picnic spot and has been quietly doing its own thing ever since. The cooking is rooted in Menorcan tradition, with contemporary touches and a dedicated section of rice dishes that regulars tend to navigate toward. The room feels like a house because it is one, with a hostess who runs it like she means it and a wine list that ranges further than you might expect out here.

The open kitchen runs on charcoal and open flame, and the dining room looks straight out over the Mallorcan coast. This is the modern Mediterranean restaurant inside the Pleta de Mar hotel, where Marc Fosh lends his name and a young local chef runs the kitchen day to day. The à la carte and tasting menu both lean hard into Balearic ingredients: fish from the market, local meats, vegetables pulled from the season.

A glass of cava appears in your hand before you've found your seat, which tells you most of what you need to know about Sa Taula. This tiny contemporary restaurant in the Gros district seats ten guests at most, all eating together, with the two chefs simultaneously cooking, serving, and chatting across the room. One surprise menu, drinks included, ingredients from small local producers. Dinner party energy, without the obligation to bring anything.

A contemporary tasting-menu restaurant facing Logroño's co-cathedral, where the two chef-owners work the room as much as the kitchen, which gives the whole thing an easy, personal feel you don't always get at this register. The cooking leans on seasonal Riojan produce and modern technique, though it borrows freely from wherever it feels like, and the cod done in the style of ajoarriero has become something of a calling card.

Stone-built and tucked inside a vineyard estate in the D.O. Ribeiro wine country, this Galician restaurant takes traditional cooking somewhere a little more considered without losing sight of local meat and fish sourced that morning. You can order from the à la carte or pick one of two tasting menus, both offered with wine pairings, which makes sense given that the cellar and the kitchen are essentially the same project.

The wood-fired oven is the star here, turning out baby lamb and Castilian suckling pig at this classic restaurant-asador in Montiel. The room earns a slow look: a glass-fronted wine cellar lines one wall, and a fresh fish counter up front quietly signals that the sea shows up this far inland too. Cantabrian hake and red tuna tataki sit alongside the roasts on an à la carte that takes traditional Spanish cooking without irony.

The façade looks like it has been quietly minding its own business for decades, while inside the chef has been running a contemporary tasting-focused restaurant with serious culinary ambition. He trained at the Basque Culinary Centre before coming home to reinvent the family place, and the menu shifts with the seasons. A Michelin Selected pick in a city that doesn't always make the food conversation.

A Menorcan country house converted into a small rural hotel, with a terrace shaded by the kind of afternoon light that makes you order more than you planned. The kitchen runs on its own organic garden, olive trees, and beehives, and two set menus lean into that self-sufficiency hard, one built around honey, the other around the house olive oil. The à la carte adds rice dishes, pasta, and a lobster section that requires advance notice, which feels appropriately serious.

Ember cookery is the organizing principle here, a small Catalan restaurant tucked into a quiet village in the Baix Empordà where the kitchen treats live fire as a dialect rather than a trick. The menu reads Mediterranean and seasonal, with an à la carte alongside tasting menus. In summer, a terrace wrapped in greenery pulls most of the room outside, which is probably exactly what you'd want in a village this small.

The terrace at the top of a Málaga hill, with a white village tumbling down the slope in front of you, does a lot of the work before the food arrives. This is a family-run grill house with a focus on young Malaga goat and aged cuts cooked over fire. Two brothers run the place, updating a charming old family home without losing the sense that it's been here forever. Ask what's on the daily specials board.

A contemporary Spanish restaurant in central Lleida run by a couple who split duties cleanly: one handles savory, the other dessert. The kitchen takes traditional Catalan cooking and nudges it somewhere new, with à la carte options alongside tasting menus. The snails stewed with slow-cooked tomato and onion have their own quiet following. Pay attention to whatever isn't on the menu that day, because that's often where things get interesting.

Six seats at a counter, two chefs working in front of you, and a menu that moves between sashimi, nigiri, and hot dishes like black cod without asking your opinion. Sensato is a tiny omakase spot in the Eixample where local Catalan ingredients get the full Japanese knife treatment, up close and in real time. Book via WhatsApp, because of course you do.

The name nods to the Japanese art of binding, which sets the tone for a place built around robata cooking, where the grill does most of the talking. It's a casual, informal Japanese restaurant on the Manzanares side of Madrid, small enough that the omakase menu makes more sense than the à la carte. The chef's tasting path moves through smoke, char, and a few combinations that sound strange on paper and work completely on the plate.

The name means "deep sea," and the kitchen leans into that, running through maki, temaki, sashimi, and tempura alongside Wagyu shipped directly from Japan. This is a sit-down Japanese restaurant that has recently rethought both its room and its cooking, tilting toward something more contemporary without losing the thread. Bar seats put you in front of the chefs if you want the show. A tasting menu is available with at least a day's notice.

The tasting menus here are named after rappers, which tells you something about the room before you've even sat down. This contemporary restaurant in Girona pairs an industrial, black-on-black interior with a Mediterranean-leaning kitchen that sources fish direct from the Blanes market. The name nods to an old-school public bench where the unemployed would gather, a detail that sits pleasantly at odds with how seriously good the cheesecake apparently is.

Set on a historic Menorcan estate beside the Sant Ignasi hotel, Smoix is a contemporary restaurant where the setting does a lot of the talking before the food arrives. The team keeps things focused: a short menu plus two tasting options, one of them fully vegetable-driven. The cooking is Mediterranean at its roots, updated just enough to feel considered rather than fussy. Dress comfortably; this is the countryside, and it shows.

The kitchen sources much of its produce from the restaurant's own farm in the Maresme region, which is a fairly serious commitment to knowing where your lunch comes from. This is a polished Mediterranean dining room on the first floor of the Majestic Hotel, leaning into Catalan ingredients with an à la carte and a tasting menu built from the same dishes. Sunday brunch draws a crowd, so booking ahead is less a suggestion than a requirement.

The name comes from the Spanish translations of the chef's children's names, which tells you something about how personal this place is. At an elongated counter seating six and a handful of tables, the menu rotates roughly every two months between two tasting options, blending Japanese technique with Mediterranean instinct. The cod cheek okonomiyaki has developed a quiet reputation of its own, and it's easy to see why once it arrives.

Seven seats at a bar, one chef, and everything cooked in front of you: Somodó Bá is a tiny counter restaurant in l'Eixample Esquerra where Toshi Suzuki runs two tasting menus built on Mediterranean market produce with a quiet Japanese sensibility. The kitchen closes the gap between Barcelona and Tokyo without announcing it. Book through the website, arrive on time, and note that the shorter menu only runs weekday lunchtimes.

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.

A short walk from the Museo Sorolla, this contemporary Chinese fusion restaurant pulls together flavors from across Asia and Spain in ways that feel neither forced nor predictable. The chef, known as Julio, runs two tasting menus alongside an à la carte, and the dim sum has quietly become the stuff of neighborhood legend. The room is modern and calm, the kind of place where the food does the talking.

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.

The open grill does the heavy lifting at this modern asador in Las Letras, housed in a greenhouse-style winter garden that makes the whole thing feel like eating outdoors without the weather. The Triciclo group bills it as a "temple of fire," which is a lot, but the fish pulled straight from the auction and the Galician T-bone make a reasonable case. Grilled Tudela vegetables hold their own against the meat, which is saying something.

Grilled vegetables take center stage at this relaxed restaurant inside the Kursaal congress center, where the kitchen carries the stamp of celebrated chef Andoni Luis Aduriz. The Nordic-inflected dining room opens onto a terrace with views over the mouth of the Urumea river, and the menu moves between à la carte, daily specials, and a tasting menu. Sitting at the bar counter means watching everything come together right in front of you.

The dining room sits inside the former stables of a marquis's palace, barrel-vaulted ceilings doing most of the decorating. It's a contemporary restaurant where the chef runs seasonal set menus and à la carte, with a self-taught sensibility that pulls Iberian pork through French and Asian influences without making a big fuss about it. The room is the kind of surprise that rewards wandering down an unfamiliar street in Valladolid.

A terrace looking out over Ávila's medieval walls sets the scene at this casual restaurant from chef Carlos Casillas, whose more formal spot Barro sits in the same building. The menu runs through traditional regional dishes with a contemporary lean, tapas at the bar, half-portions available in the dining room, and a flan with butter ice cream that the source material practically begs you to order. Exposed wooden beams, no dress code implied.

A narrow street beside the Rosewood Villa Magna hides this Japanese restaurant, where the counter seats put you close enough to watch the chef work through everything from delicate sashimi to charcoal-grilled dishes. Two tasting menus, a Kaiseki and an Omakase, require a day's notice to book, which is either charming or a test of how organised you are.

A sushi bar anchors the ground floor, with two dining rooms stacked above it and a private room tucked away for groups, all done in a clean contemporary style that feels very Salamanca. This is a polished Japanese restaurant, part of a small group with outposts on the Costa del Sol, and the à la carte runs long. The nigiri, hot and cold, arrive outside the set menu, which is either a bonus or a mild puzzle depending on how you like to order.

A sushi bar in the shadow of the Alcazaba, Ta-Kumi sits in a slim, quietly composed room with counter seats downstairs and a second dining room above. The name fuses the Japanese words for artisan and maestro, which tells you what the kitchen thinks of itself, and the nigiri suggest they're not wrong. À la carte or a tasting menu, with an optional Wagyu course for those who like to commit.

A short walk from Salamanca's university and its famous carved frog, this full-service restaurant sits in the historic quarter with a room that splits the difference between classic and contemporary. The kitchen runs on seasonal produce from around the province, but the chef's time in Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, and beyond pulls the menu well outside Spain's borders. A daily set menu keeps things accessible for the lunch crowd working through the old city.

A few tables, an open kitchen behind the bar, and everyone seated at once, so don't be late. This small Poble Sec taberna runs a single, ever-changing surprise menu that pulls from both Galician and Catalan traditions, the chef's way of mapping where he's from onto where he landed. Fish and seafood lean creamy and carefully paired. The room is rustic without trying too hard, and the fixed start time gives the whole thing a dinner-party feel.

A counter above the bar tracks how many Tortilla de Betanzos have left the kitchen since 2014, which tells you most of what you need to know about this traditional taberna near the national library. The cocido arrives in three stages, the grill handles serious fish and meat, and the daily stew changes but always has heft. It's the kind of old-school Madrid dining room where the cooking has no interest in keeping up with trends, and the room is fine with that.

The name nods to the rest houses built along the Inca Trail, which sets the tone for a room dressed in slate, wood, and wicker that feels considered rather than themed. This is a Peruvian restaurant serving classic dishes alongside fusion riffs calibrated for a Spanish crowd, with portions generous enough that no one leaves calculating whether they ordered enough. The ceviche variations are where the kitchen seems happiest.