The Best Places in Spain

A modernist hotel that rises from the Rioja vineyards like someone dropped a design museum among the grapevines. The interiors, conceived by the late Spanish fashion designer David Delfín, run to smooth concrete, blonde wood, and floor-to-ceiling glass framing the landscape. Guest rooms are minimal but comfortable, each with a private terrace. The wine is made on the premises, and Logroño's tapas bars are a short drive away when the in-house restaurant feels like too easy an answer.

The spa is built into an old wine and olive-oil mill, which tells you most of what you need to know about this place. It's a boutique hotel in the Priorat wine country, southwest of Barcelona, where the windows frame rows of vines and medieval villages sit just over the ridge. Rooms run contemporary inside a property with serious old bones, and the pool handles the afternoons well. Wine tasting and a fine-dining table round out the stay.

Spain's first grand luxury hotel sits on a hillside in Tenerife rather than Madrid, which feels like the kind of thing Agatha Christie would have arranged, and she did stay here. The neoclassical bones are still intact; the rooms now run to clean whites and local art, with Atlantic views that haven't changed. Multiple restaurants and bars, a wellness area, and a concierge team that plans bespoke island experiences round out this storied resort.

The building steps back from the seafront in a ziggurat of terraces, which is one way to make sure nearly every room gets a view. This contemporary Meliá resort sits right across from Terramar Beach at the quieter end of the Passeig Marítim, far enough from the crowds to feel self-contained. A Mediterranean restaurant, an oyster bar, and a poolside option keep most guests on-site without complaint. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Seven pill-shaped villas sit scattered across the Galician countryside like a very tasteful extraterrestrial landing. This small resort keeps it deliberately spare: no cascading pools, no tennis courts, just forest and silence and minimalist interiors that seem designed to make you forget you own a phone. A central lodge anchors the whole thing, and the restaurant pulls serious weight on its own, with guests drifting between the kitchen, wine cellar, and dining room across a long, unhurried meal.

A 15th-century Mallorcan farmhouse turned luxury boutique hotel, sitting a few minutes from Palma airport in a way that somehow feels very far from it. The 32 rooms blend antique stonework with contemporary furnishings and a noticeable Moorish thread running through the design. There's a spa with a heated indoor pool, two more pools outside, a proper restaurant with a terrace, and a cocktail lounge for when you've had enough sun.

A converted Mallorcan farmhouse on a private nature reserve in the Tramuntana mountains, The Lodge has been around for half a millennium in one form or another, and the restoration leans hard into that tension: stone walls this old, furniture this sleek. It's a luxury hotel with a spa, yoga, golf, an infinity pool, and somehow a beach just minutes away. The kind of place where "rustic" means something very different from what you'd normally pay for it.

Seven pools and no beach access for a mile and a half: the Costa Blanca's overdevelopment problem is, in a roundabout way, the reason this Bali-style resort exists. The rooms lean into a Far East fantasy convincingly enough that the Mediterranean glimpsed in the distance feels like a mild surprise. It sits near the Terra Mitica theme park and stays deliberately removed from the coastal chaos it was built to ignore.

A restored Asturian farmhouse with five rooms, an adults-only policy, and an Eames lounge chair waiting in at least one of them. The owners of this quiet countryside B&B seem to have sat down and listed every detail a reasonable person would forget to wish for: underfloor heating, Bose sound, La Chinata bath products, and an organic Slow Food dinner each evening. Breakfast is homemade everything, and they'll pack a hiking lunch too.

A converted stone farmhouse twenty minutes from Palma, Es Figueral Nou sits on agricultural land that makes the beaches feel like a different country, even though they're close. It's a small luxury hotel with rooms split between the original building and a contemporary annex, both dressed in warm, modern interiors with art on the walls. There's a proper wellness center, cycling tours on offer, and chef Santi Taura running everything from pool snacks to full dinners.

A centuries-old stone farmhouse in the Mallorcan countryside, converted into a rural hotel with enough character that the renovation barely had to try. Honey-colored walls and timbered ceilings do the heavy lifting, while blue shutters and jasmine-draped terraces keep things from feeling like a museum. The grounds run to olive and pomegranate trees, with garden dining underneath. Inside, ikat prints and murals give the suites a personality beyond "nice old room."

A three-generation family home in a quiet Galician village, now a boutique hotel whose rooms take their names from the building's own architectural details and family stories. Rustic beams, arched windows, and neutral tones set the tone, while outside there's a heated pool and yoga classes that range from Hatha to, somehow, Tibetan Sword Yoga. The restaurant leans into Galician seafood and regional desserts.

The name comes from multiplying 12 dishes by 12 signature cocktails, which tells you something about how seriously this place takes its own fun. It's a tasting menu restaurant in Vitoria-Gasteiz, running either 17 or 21 courses of fusion cooking that pulls from Southeast Asia, Japan, and wherever else seems interesting that week. The menu shifts constantly, and the kitchen pairs food and cocktails as a single project rather than an afterthought.

A Japanese-style counter anchors this spare dining room in Puigcerdà, where one chef does everything: cooks, explains each dish, greets guests, and personally sources fish from the Blanes auction and produce straight from local farms. It's a tasting-menu restaurant run entirely solo, which makes the whole operation feel like a magic trick performed at close range. Three menus of varying length rotate constantly, so the meal you get is whatever he felt like building that week.

The name is the street number of the chef's family home in São Paulo, which tells you something about how personal this restaurant feels. It sits on the ground floor of a hotel steps from La Concha Beach, serving a short à la carte and a tasting menu that wanders freely, Basque ingredients one moment, then Mexico, Japan, or France the next. The cooking uses technique as a means rather than a point, which is rarer than it sounds.

Refrigerated cabinets of aged cuts line the dining room at this roadside Galician steakhouse outside Trasmonte, where the walls run to landscape photography and the menu doesn't try to be anything other than what it is. Grilled meat is the point, with sirloin, Angus ribs, and aged T-bone doing the arguing. A few starters and fish options give non-carnivores something to work with, but nobody drives out here for the salad.

The restaurant's name is a pun on the chef's surname, Trigo meaning wheat in Spanish, which sets the tone for a place that takes itself seriously without being stiff about it. Stone walls and an open kitchen anchor the dining room in A Coruña's old town, and the market-driven menu shifts daily, helped along by the notable absence of a freezer on the premises. Sharing plates and seasonal rice dishes for two fill out the table.

The restaurant takes its name from a small island visible from the shore, which tells you something about how long this family has been paying attention to the sea. A traditional seafood dining room in Ferrol with two elegant rooms, a terrace, and an open kitchen, it's been around forever, handed down through four generations. The cooking is rooted in Galician classics with the occasional creative twist from the chef.

Pilgrims trudging the last stretch of the Camino Francés pass right by this ground-floor spot on Rúa de San Pedro, though the menu suggests the chef has been looking further east than Santiago. It's a casual fusion restaurant in a stone building with a rustic-contemporary feel, where traditional Galician cooking folds in Asian technique. A patio terrace handles the overflow, and the sparkling wine list is longer than you'd expect.

A narrow pedestrian street in Jerez's old quarter leads to this traditional seafood and grill restaurant, where the philosophy is essentially that the sea is one large pantry. The open fish cabinet anchors the menu, but premium cuts from heritage cattle breeds share equal billing, and the rice dishes run deep. Half portions are available for most things, which makes working through the card considerably easier.

The ageing chamber visible from the dining room holds premium beef and ox, and it sets the tone for what follows. This is a grill restaurant attached to a roadside hotel a few miles south of Burgos, where the chef works the fire in full view on the à la carte side of the room. The other half runs a set menu. It's the kind of place where carnivores make detours off the motorway and leave looking satisfied and slightly stunned.

A small seafood restaurant in Gijón where the menu is formatted like a ship's logbook, tracing every ingredient back to its source. The focus is Cantabrian, so expect oysters, razor clams, cockles, and whatever came off the boats that morning. The chef weaves in outside influences without losing the clean taste of the sea. Three omakase-style tasting menus run from low tide to high, or you can order à la carte if you're not committing to the full voyage.

The name is a tip-off: "acebuche" means wild olive tree, and olive oil runs through this modern restaurant like a through-line. The kitchen is a Franco-Andalusian partnership, literally, a chef from Brittany and a partner from the foot of the Sierra Morena, who channel classic French technique into the produce of Jaén province. Two set menus or à la carte, and when the weather cooperates, the patio terrace is where you want to be.

A medieval patio tucked into Toledo's old quarter sets the scene for this modern Spanish restaurant, where the kitchen follows a single seasonal tasting menu built around herbs and vegetables from the family's own country estate. The cooking leans contemporary while staying grounded in regional tradition, and the wine cellar below is worth the detour on its own. Adolfo Muñoz is a Toledo institution, and his sons now run the room.

A bistro-style dining room on the Paseo de Mallorca, terrace shaded by an open arcade and a canal view to go with it. The chef brings a Buenos Aires upbringing through stints in London, Paris, and Moscow, and the Modern Mediterranean tasting menus carry all that mileage without feeling like a geography lesson. Two menus, three or five courses, dishes meant for sharing, and a room packed with people who booked ahead because they knew to.

Two beer barrels mark the entrance to this small Galician tavern in the always-buzzing Ponzano stretch of Chamberí. The kitchen calls itself an Atlantic tavern and takes zero-waste cooking seriously, though the menu reads more like a laid-back sharing spread than a manifesto. Galician wines dominate the list, the bar has seats if you want them, and the name itself is a Galician word for affection, which sets the tone pretty well.

Sitting inside an industrial estate is not the obvious move for a Basque restaurant, yet here Agorregi is, doing it without apology. The menu runs à la carte or through two tasting menus, all rooted in market-driven Basque cooking with the occasional contemporary flourish. One practical note: some desserts need to be ordered upfront so the kitchen can prepare them, which is either charming or a test of your planning instincts.

A century-old property a short walk from La Malagueta beach gives this Andalucian restaurant its backbone. The menu leans into regional flavors through a contemporary lens, with a no-cutlery section that does exactly what it sounds like, half-portions for grazing, and a six-course menu if you want the full arc. The couple running it, one in the kitchen and one on the floor, keeps the whole thing feeling personal rather than polished.

A thatched roof and a terrace looking out over the lagoon toward the sanctuary of El Rocío, which sets the scene before the food even arrives. This is a traditional restaurant in one of Andalusia's most singular villages, deep in Doñana National Park country, and the kitchen leans into its surroundings with local marsh and coastal ingredients prepared without fuss. The kind of lunch where the view does as much work as anything on the plate.

The wood-fired oven is visible from the dining room, which tells you something about priorities here. This Spanish restaurant in central Aranda de Duero splits into a tapas bar at the front and a sit-down room behind it, with red meats and seasonal vegetables doing most of the heavy lifting. The baby lamb from the IGP Castilla y León designation needs to be ordered ahead, which is the kind of detail worth knowing before you arrive.

The name means "chilli pepper" in Peruvian Spanish and "taste" in Japanese, which is about as economical as a restaurant can be with its mission statement. This Barcelona dining room runs a Japanese-Peruvian tasting menu format, with a lunchtime option available midweek. The kitchen leans into the Nikkei tradition with real conviction, and the ceviches, offered in a few distinct styles, tend to be what people talk about on the way out.

A glass-fronted terrace called the Invernadero faces the street for à la carte and tapas, while the interior dining room runs a tasting menu at midday. The kitchen folds Castilian flavors into Asian and Latin American technique, which sounds like it shouldn't work as well as it does. The crispy pig's ear with hummus is the dish that earns the story.

Eight seats per service is the whole plan at Akase, a Japanese omakase-style restaurant in Jerez where the chef runs a single tasting menu built around Cádiz seafood treated with Japanese technique. Cuttlefish arrives sliced usuzukuri-thin, blue crab goes into sake, and local whiting gets cured. Dessert pivots to koji fermentation and bubble tea that somehow loops in the sherry bodegas outside. Book ahead, obviously.

A glass-fronted wine cellar anchors the room at this polished modern Spanish restaurant a short walk from Retiro park. The menu splits into sharing plates and fuller dishes, with a tasting menu for those who want the full tour. The kitchen leans into updated traditional cooking, the kind where Galician stew turns up inside ravioli and hake gets a lemon pil-pil. A gastro-bar with high tables handles the casual end if you walk in without a plan.

The ribeye draws diners from across the Rioja, and that pretty much tells you what kind of steakhouse this is. Tucked beside a church in a quiet village square, Alameda is a family-run grill built around the quality of its ingredients, with whole fish and seasonal specials rounding out a menu that doesn't need to show off. Order whatever the kitchen picked up that morning and you'll be fine.

A bistro steps from the Atarazanas Central Market, Alaparte keeps the kitchen open behind the bar so you can watch the team translate local produce into food that drifts between Andalusian, French, and Asian without losing its footing. The name is a nod to the chef's grandfather, who sorted discarded fish for a living, which is a better origin story than most restaurants manage. Casual, market-driven, and worth the detour off the tourist drag.

Stone walls and wood beams set the mood at this Galician grill, which takes its name from a Luis Eduardo Aute song and takes its cooking just as seriously. Top cuts of meat are priced by weight on the à la carte, and two tasting menus let the kitchen flex further. The fire does most of the talking, with the chef's role being to get out of the way and let exceptional ingredients speak.

The open grill does most of the talking at this Vigo restaurant, where the chef sources fish and seafood almost entirely from the auction in A Guarda, so the menu shifts with whatever the Rías Baixas offered up that morning. Spider crab, lobster, prawns from local estuaries, wild bream, and whatever else arrived at dawn share the card with seasonal Galician meat and vegetables, no flourishes required.

A corner of the Gros district where a neighborhood bar became a casual bistro, run by three partners who came up through the Basque Culinary Center together. The cooking is contemporary Basque, leaning hard on vegetables from small local growers, with fish and meat rounding things out. You can eat at a proper table or pull up at the bar counter, which tends to fill first.

The chef here describes himself as "pure Murcian stock," and the kitchen follows suit with traditional, market-driven cooking rooted in the region. Up front there's an informal bar for tapas; behind it, a classically furnished dining room that doubles as private space when needed. A lunch menu keeps things accessible, but the stews and rice dishes, ordered ahead for two, are the ones worth planning around. Listen when they recite the off-menu specials.

A husband-and-wife restaurant tucked into a tiny Asturian village, where the vegetable garden sits right beside the dining room and whatever's in it arrives on the table minutes later. The couple run menus built around fish pulled daily from the auction houses at Lastres and Tazones and serious local beef, all cooked in a contemporary style. The name is an Asturian word for pausing to breathe, which tells you the pace they're after.

The grill is the centerpiece here, surrounded by a charcuterie section and cuts of Wagyu, Angus, and aged beef that arrive without sides unless you ask for them separately. Aleño Brassafina is the more relaxed ground-floor steakhouse sibling to a Michelin-starred upstairs neighbor, and the whole setup is built for sharing. Order the pickled mussels early and let the table argue over which cut to order next.

A chef who followed love to Castelló de la Plana and brought his whole résumé with him: Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, all of it folded into a contemporary dining room near the center of town. The menu roams accordingly, with an à la carte side and a tasting menu of around eleven courses that needs booking ahead. It's the kind of place where the chef's biography is also the through-line of the meal.

Bare concrete in pink and grey, an open kitchen framed in exposed steel, and a menu that borrows freely from the more celebrated Alejandro Serrano next door. This casual contemporary restaurant in Miranda de Ebro runs the same ideas through a looser, more affordable filter, with dishes like ceviche-style prawn carpaccio alongside a daily set menu priced for regulars. The vibe is industrial without trying too hard about it.

Cod cooked ajoarriero-style with lobster has been pulling regulars back to this traditional restaurant for long enough that booking ahead is just part of the deal. It's a full-service dining room run by a brother-and-sister team with the kind of polish you'd expect from a family that knows how to run a room. The menu runs à la carte or tasting, and you can order raciones if you'd rather graze than commit.

Tucked inside a hotel, this Catalan restaurant opens onto a courtyard ringed by stone archways, where tables sit under covered walkways and the whole scene feels more like a manor garden than a dining room. The menu leans on the Empordà coast, with rice dishes and grilled seafood anchoring things, and the kitchen keeps the cooking close to tradition without turning it into a museum piece.

The name comes from a Rioja dialect word for scraping the plate clean, which sets the tone before you've even sat down. This restaurant inside a hotel in one of Spain's prettiest medieval villages serves an updated take on regional Riojan cooking, with trompe-l'oeil flourishes tucked among the intense flavors. A vaulted wine cellar runs beneath the room. The menu comes as a journey, short or long, and the wine list has the conviction you'd expect from this corner of Spain.

A French chef quoting philosophy at the door is either a red flag or a promise, and at Allégorie it leans the other way. This contemporary French restaurant in Chamberí runs across two floors, with a bar at street level for wine, champagne, and small bites, and a proper dining room upstairs where set menus named like movements in a symphony let the kitchen move through the seasons at its own pace.

A small restaurant in a historic building just off the Plaza de España, where the cooking stays deliberately close to Cádiz tradition, no detours into mod-Spanish flourishes. The chef trained under Ricard Camarena and brought back a particular focus on technique, applied here to old regional recipes done with care. The menu follows the seasons and stays short. Save room for the poleá, the local dessert that tends to convert the skeptical.

A converted salt warehouse perched above salt pans that have been worked since ancient times, Almazen is a tasting-menu restaurant built around an open kitchen with a bar counter circling it. The chef cooks in plain sight, pulling from local organic produce and leaning hard on muera, the salt native to this valley. On fair days the meal opens outside, looking out over the mines, which sets the tone rather perfectly.

A family farmhouse turned contemporary Andalusian restaurant, with a patio terrace that makes lunch feel like the right call in any season. The kitchen works from a traditional regional base, nudging it forward with Asian touches and dishes that shift with what's good right now. A set lunch menu handles casual visits; a longer tasting menu is there when you want the full argument, though you'll need to book it a day ahead.

An air-conditioned courtyard tucked inside a Vitoria-Gasteiz address that's been around forever, now steered by a sibling duo who've quietly made it their own. This is a traditional Spanish restaurant with a modernist streak, where the menu shifts with the market and the dining room hums along under attentive family service. Lunch on a weekday unlocks a set menu; evenings lean more deliberate, with a tasting option for those who came prepared.

Five tables, a kitchen you can watch from every one of them, and a chef who started out as a baker before finding his way to the stove. Anhelo is a small, intimate tasting-menu restaurant in central Castelló de la Plana, where three set menus anchor a creative, sense-driven kitchen. Book ahead, because with that few seats the room fills fast and there is no wandering in off the street.

Panelled dining rooms with a rustic feel sit inside a rural hotel deep in Basque Country, far enough from anywhere that the journey feels intentional. The kitchen updates traditional Basque cooking on an à la carte or set menus, and the local cheeses are worth the trip on their own. A modern wine cellar runs below, and a panoramic lift delivers private groups to an attic room above, which is a lot of drama for one building.

A low-key, minimalist restaurant steps from the beach near Zahora, where the stripped-back room is clearly a deliberate choice and not an oversight. The kitchen works contemporary Spanish cuisine with deep Cádiz roots, leaning on locally caught fish, tuna, and rice dishes shaped by whatever the province is doing well that season. A handful of guest rooms sit upstairs for anyone who'd rather not drive home after the croquettes.

The kitchen keeps its own urban vegetable garden and a botanical terrace, which tells you something about how seriously this contemporary Mediterranean restaurant takes its sourcing. Set inside a hotel in Palma, Aromata runs a flexible à la carte at lunch and shifts into tasting-menu mode come evening, with two options that lean into the island's culinary traditions through a modern lens. The kind of place where the menu changes with what's good that day.

A private bar tucked beneath residential arches sets the tone before you ever sit down. This is a contemporary dining room where the chef works through Asturian culinary tradition with a light hand and careful plating, keeping flavor central. The menu runs from à la carte to two tasting menus, one named for the place itself. Good for a proper dinner without the full theater of a destination restaurant.

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.

The dining room sits twenty metres underground in a 15th-century Mudejar wine cellar, all labyrinthine stone, accessible by stairs or, if you prefer, a lift. Arrope is a modern tasting-menu restaurant in Rueda where the chef, a Canary Islander who trained in serious kitchens, builds seasonal menus around local produce. The cellar belongs to the Yllera wine family, so the pairings are less of an afterthought than usual.

A traditional Galician restaurant near Riazor beach, named for the Celtic tribe who once called this corner of the coast home, which sets a certain tone before you even sit down. The dining room is comfortable and unhurried, with a partial view into the kitchen, and regulars fill it reliably enough that a reservation is the sensible move. The à la carte leans into the region's seafood with conviction, lamprey appearing when the season allows.

A twelve-seat counter is the whole room, which tells you what kind of dinner this is going to be. The couple behind it cook Basque food through a Peruvian lens, a combination that sounds like a pitch but plays out with real conviction on the plate. The tasting menu is the move, though the à la carte holds its own. Sit in Gros, near the Kursaal, and let them feed you.

Vintage posters from the Albacete Fair line the bar at this family-run Spanish restaurant, now on its third generation and sitting a short walk from the Cathedral. The room splits between a lively bar with high tables and two proper dining rooms. The menu runs from tapas and small plates through serious La Mancha stews and select cuts of meat, with coastal dishes appearing where you might not expect them this far inland.

Two aging chambers full of maturing beef dominate the bar the moment you walk in, which tells you everything about priorities here. Set inside an old mansion near a campsite on the edge of town, this is a traditional steakhouse where the kitchen runs on olive wood and the chef, known locally as "the crab," keeps the menu squarely focused on grilled red meat. The wine cellar is deep enough that choosing a bottle becomes its own project.

Fish and meat cuts sold by weight over live embers, in a stone-walled dining room on the ground floor of a rural guesthouse steps from the parish church. This village asador in Tardienta is the kind of place everyone local already knows about. The chef trained at Etxebarri and DiverXo before coming home, and the menu follows the market, which in practice means whatever looks good that week, cooked over fire.

Whitewashed walls, cactus on the terrace, and the crumbling ruins of a 19th-century iron ore terminal just down the road: Agua Amarga's most remote dining room earns its approach. This rustic-contemporary Spanish grill sits on the Carboneras road outside town, with two fireplace-lit rooms and a terrace ringed with prickly pears. The kitchen leans traditional with Arab and North African threads woven in, and the daily fish and beef entrecôte tend to do the heavy lifting.

A mural of a giant black-and-white octopus covers one wall of this grilled seafood restaurant tucked into a narrow lane in Almería's old quarter. The room keeps a certain rustic Castilian weight to it despite a renovation, which is an odd aesthetic for a kitchen that now answers almost entirely to whatever the boats brought in that morning. Order from the grill and let the octopus watch.

The open kitchen sits right behind the service bar, so the chef who cooked your food is also the one taking your order and checking in on the table. This small contemporary restaurant near the Palacio de Exposiciones leans into Andalusian flavors shaped by modern technique, with a set menu that anchors the more seasonal tasting menu. The room is bright and a little eclectic, the kind of place that feels personal because it is.

A macaroni section on the menu is either a bold statement or a love letter to Catalan grandmothers, and here it reads as both. This cosy neighbourhood restaurant in Sant Gervasi runs on traditional Catalan cooking, the kind that tastes like someone's kitchen rather than a concept. Tripe, croquettes, and pasta dishes that would make your nonna weep, with the odd modern touch slipped in without making a fuss.

A bistro-style spot in the old city where two young chefs run the room with the kind of looseness that makes a meal feel like it was their idea to invite you. The menu moves through contemporary Spanish cooking with quiet nods to Japanese, Mexican, and Peruvian flavors, alongside a dedicated section for Almadraba tuna. Finger foods arrive as tapas, the pork cheek ravioli with foie gras sauce shows real ambition, and nothing feels like it's trying too hard.

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.

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.

Veal tripe, cod in pil-pil, oxtail braised in red wine: the tasting menu at this traditional Spanish dining room in Vallehermoso makes no apologies for loving the old recipes. Stews and slow-cooked cuts do the heavy lifting, with daily specials that never make it onto the written menu. Half-portions are available for most dishes, which is either generous or dangerous depending on your willpower.

Rice dishes cooked open at a counter, so you can watch the whole production, are the main event at this Mediterranean restaurant facing the Ciudad de la Comunicación park. The room goes full coastal color scheme, yellow and blue from floor to fixtures, in case the name left any doubt. Creative pinchos round out the menu, and a set tasting option exists for anyone who'd rather leave the decisions to the kitchen.

Tom yum crab croquettes alongside conger eel cannelloni tell you immediately that this informal restaurant is not playing by regional rules. The couple running BaceLo cook Galician ingredients through a wider lens, pulling in chipotle, satay, curry, and whatever else fits, with enough confidence that it never reads as restless. The room on Ferrol's central pedestrian strip is rustic-contemporary, and the whole operation has a relaxed, neighborhood feel.