The Best Places in Spain

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.

A modern restaurant on the third floor of a hotel in Badalona, with floor-to-ceiling views across the Mediterranean that do a lot of the heavy lifting before the food even arrives. The kitchen runs open, with a chef's table for anyone who wants a front-row seat to the experimentation. The menu leans into mixing and playing with ingredients, and tasting menus are available for those happy to hand over the decisions entirely.

A converted paprika mill in the Espinardo district, with a basement museum of old spice tins that's more charming than it sounds. This is a modern tasting-menu restaurant where the kitchen roots itself in Murcia's traditions before taking a sharp creative turn. Chef Rodi Fernández runs both an à la carte and two tasting menus, the cooking technically confident without feeling cold. The paprika history below stairs is a genuine talking point before the meal has even started.

Jordi Cruz's minimalist gastro-bar near the waterfront runs on the premise that a tapa can be a precise, considered thing without losing its nerve. The menu moves between individual bites and sharing plates, with an all-table tasting menu called Ten's if you want the full picture. The room is spare and deliberate, which suits food that is doing a lot of quiet thinking while looking casual about it.

The walls carry black-and-white photographs of Cullera's seafaring past, which sets the tone for a restaurant that takes its regional roots seriously. The team behind this calm, contemporary dining room passed through Mugaritz and Atrio before landing here, and that background shows up in the rice dishes, dry and soupy, that anchor the menu. The orange crème brûlée has its own reputation.

The menu at this Port de Pollença restaurant changes almost daily, driven entirely by what Mallorca's small producers happen to deliver. Chef David Rivas works à la carte or through tasting menus, finishes dishes tableside, and runs the kitchen on a strict no-additives, zero-waste philosophy with a heavy lean on the grill. Relaxed in feel, serious in intent, the kind of room where the food arrives with a short explanation rather than a long apology.

The griddle runs the show at Tetsu, a teppanyaki restaurant that leans into Spanish and Asian flavors in equal measure. Think western in spirit but Japanese in structure, with an omakase option alongside a weekly-changing menu. The two young chefs behind it have skills that quietly embarrass older kitchens. The bar fills up fast, and the room is booked solid most nights, so planning ahead is the move.

Corn tortillas pressed fresh each morning on a traditional comal set the rhythm at this contemporary Mexican restaurant near the Prado. The menu leans into sharing, moving between cold dishes and things off the griddle, with the cooking rooted in Mexican tradition but not shy about modern moves. The sister restaurant to Puntarena, it draws a crowd that arrived hungry and ordered more than planned.

The dining room doubles as a gallery for Baroness Ariane de Rothschild's art collection, which sets a certain tone before you've even looked at the menu. This is a formal restaurant inside a luxury boutique hotel, where the chef brings a Portuguese sensibility to Basque ingredients, with Galician and French ideas folded in at the edges. There's an evolving à la carte and a tasting menu, both anchored to whatever the season is doing locally.

Exposed brick and heavy wooden beams give this Chamberí restaurant its industrial bones, though the kitchen has more wanderlust than the decor suggests. The chef came up through London and Mexico City, and the menu reflects that restlessness, local and seasonal produce handled with a contemporary looseness that stops short of showing off. The room bills itself as a "playful space with a little interventionist mentality," which is either a manifesto or a warning, depending on your mood.

A wall of colorful vegetables at the entrance sets the tone at this gastrobar on the ground floor of the Avenida Hotel. The open kitchen turns out contemporary Andalusian cooking that moves between traditional and modern, available à la carte or through set menus, including a fully plant-based option that treats Almería's famous produce as the main event rather than the supporting cast.

Tora means tiger in Japanese, and the motif shows up on the crockery and the staff uniforms, which is a commitment. This contemporary Japanese restaurant in Salamanca runs two sushi bars across two floors, with the upstairs one kept private. The chef works from Spanish ingredients through a Japanese lens, offering à la carte or an omakase menu at lunch. Serious enough to dress slightly up, relaxed enough that you won't regret it if you don't.

Yakitori is the whole point here, not a footnote to a sushi menu. The chef, Hiroshi Kobayashi, built this compact Japanese restaurant around grilled chicken skewers, and the menu follows that logic faithfully. Chicken wings and scallops fill out the card, and the Avila beef tongue shows up and quietly surprises everyone. Go à la carte or surrender to the omakase, which comes in short or long form depending on your appetite for ceding control.

A farmhouse wrapped in vineyards on the road between Maó and Cala en Porter, this restaurant is the dining room for the Torralbenc hotel, though it pulls its own weight. The kitchen, guided by Gorka Txapartegui of Hondarribia's Alameda, runs a contemporary Mediterranean menu that leans hard on what the island actually grows and fishes. The terrace, unhurried and shaded, makes it easy to lose track of how many courses you've ordered.

A 15th-century mansion tucked into Cáceres' old quarter, Torre de Sande is the relaxed, regional sibling of the three-Michelin-star Atrio just down the street. The menu leans into Extremadura: Iberian sausage, local cheeses, hearty stews, grilled meats. On a warm evening, the terrace is where you want to be, which means booking ahead is not optional so much as polite.

Named for the local stone woven into its interior, Tosca is a modern Mediterranean restaurant with a terrace that looks out over a canal lined with pleasure boats, which does the atmosphere no harm at all. The kitchen updates classic regional cooking with a light hand, and you can order à la carte or work through one of two tasting menus, the longer of which comes with a wine-pairing option for the whole table.

The name nods to the toy factory that once occupied the building, just off the old walled approach to Dénia's castle. This is a tasting-menu restaurant where an Italian chef folds local Marina Alta produce into contemporary Italian cooking, running three menus of varying length and ambition. The result plays seriously with texture and form while keeping the food recognizably Italian at heart, which is either comforting or a magic trick, depending on your expectations.

The squid sandwich with aioli and salsa brava has a following in this city, and the bone marrow with beef tartare makes a strong case for why. This is the casual side of Benito Gómez, the chef behind a celebrated spot in Ronda, doing straightforward traditional cooking near the Plaza de la Marina. No elaborate tasting menus, just the kind of food Málaga actually wants to eat on a Tuesday.

Benito Gómez runs Bardal, one of the most talked-about fine dining spots in Andalusia, and this is his more relaxed project down the street: a tapas spot built around small plates and sharing. The menu leans traditional with a few fusion detours, and the ingredients are taken just as seriously as at the mothership, even if the bill isn't. A good place to eat well in Ronda without having to think too hard about what to wear.

The room used to be one of the concert venues of Movida Madrileña, and the bones of that history are still visible in the bioconstruction fit-out. Tramo is a contemporary Spanish restaurant with a social mission baked into the model, employing people who face real barriers to the jobs market. The menu runs on ingredients from small Spanish farmers and local producers, which gives the cooking a grounded, unfussy quality that suits the space.

A gastro-bar in Zahara de los Atunes where the décor tells its own story: recycled furniture, fashion-world odds and ends, and surf culture artifacts scattered around a casual room. The kitchen leans into Asian and Latin American flavors built on local Andalusian produce, a combination that sounds unlikely until it lands. The crowd tends to come in sandy and leave happy. À la carte only, and very much a drop-in kind of place.

A small olive tree grows inside the dining room, which tells you something about how seriously Treintaitrés takes its plant-based identity. This Tudela restaurant leans on the region's famous vegetable-growing tradition, running an à la carte alongside tasting menus, with a terrace out front and quieter rooms upstairs for when you need them. The family has been in hospitality forever, and it shows in the unhurried pace of things.

Fish sold by the slice, sourced that day from the Gulf of Cádiz, is the quiet argument this traditional Sevillian restaurant makes before you've even sat down. Named after the Manhattan neighborhood and set near the old Buhaira Gardens, it's been around forever, turning out a market-driven tasting menu that shifts with whatever came off the boat. The crowd tends to know exactly what they're ordering, because they've been here before.

A creative restaurant in the Las Letras district where you can order dishes in halves or thirds, which sounds minor until you realize it changes how an entire meal works. The team behind it built the place around a simple question: where would we actually want to eat? The answer is a casual, minimalist room focused on seasonal ingredients, drawing on Peruvian and Japanese influences alongside straightforwardly Spanish ones. Artisanal cheeses round things out.

Exposed stone walls and black tones set the mood at this modern Catalan restaurant just off Avenida Diagonal, where the cooking leans traditional without the folkloric trappings. The chef behind a more formal project runs this as his looser, sharing-plates side, built around seasonal produce and dishes with genuine roots, beef tongue, sweetbreads, that sort of thing. Order a few and pass them around.

A one-man omakase counter in the heart of Jerez, where the chef runs the entire operation solo and the bar is close enough that you'll watch every cut and fold up close. The meal runs about three hours and changes with the market, so the menu is more of a conversation than a document. Booking is non-negotiable, and small talk while the last guests settle in is apparently part of the deal.

The ceiling swarms with a sculpted school of fish, and the walls are tiled to look like scales, so the room makes its obsession clear before you've ordered anything. This Barcelona restaurant runs two parallel menus: one Western, one built around nigiri, sashimi, and uramaki, with bluefin tuna anchoring both. On certain nights they host a kaitai session, teaching the Japanese art of breaking down the fish whole, which is either dinner theater or a masterclass depending on your mood.

The name comes from the local dialect word for full, which amounts to a promise the kitchen intends to keep. Set on a rural estate southwest of Miajadas, this modern Spanish restaurant runs two tasting menus built around produce the chef hunts, forages, and pulls from the surrounding gardens himself. The cooking stays rooted in Extremaduran tradition while nudging it somewhere new, and the landscape outside is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

The name is Bilbao slang for a joker, which tells you something about the locals who fill the pintxos bar out front. Push past that and there's a calm, contemporary dining room behind it, serving traditional Basque cooking that follows the season with some seriousness. The kitchen sources everything from within the city, so the menu shifts as the year does, built around fish, rice, and meat done without much fuss.

The name comes from the Swahili word for "fork," which is either charming or a little on the nose depending on your mood. This is a fine-dining restaurant built around a fully open kitchen at the center of the room, so you watch every move. Three tasting menus run simultaneously, every table starting at the same moment, a format that turns dinner into something closer to a shared performance on Eixample's Mallorca.

Cave paintings stare down from high ceilings in this two-floor modern restaurant, which makes for a conversation starter before the food even arrives. The room has a raw, brick-walled, New York loft feel, and the cooking matches that energy: contemporary dishes built on Cantabrian tradition, generous enough to share around the table. The kind of place where nothing feels precious, including the service.

Twelve seats at a single bar, one seating, everyone starts together, no stragglers tolerated. This kaiseki-influenced omakase in La Bonanova has the chef cooking Japanese tasting menus that move between the Mediterranean and Japan, with the robata grill doing a lot of quiet work on the flavors. Classic kaiseki forms like hassun and sashimi share the menu with looser, more inventive ideas. The neighborhood is residential and unhurried, which suits the format.

A contemporary Catalan restaurant tucked under the stone arches of Banyoles's medieval Plaça Major, where the minimalist interior makes a quiet argument with the thousand-year-old surroundings. The name nods to the old unit of weight used for buying food in bulk, which sets the tone: unpretentious, rooted, and a little literary. A short à la carte and a weekday set menu keep the kitchen focused, with a young team and chef Alba Hugas running the show.

The live tank near the entrance says everything about this glass-walled seafood restaurant on the Verdugo estuary: the langoustines are very much alive when you arrive. The kitchen keeps things simple, letting the fish in the display case carry the argument. A few well-chosen meat and rice dishes round out the menu for anyone who wandered in from the wrong region. The river views from every table are a reasonable consolation for being this far from the coast.

A deer farm sits just next door, which sets the tone rather well for a mountain inn that has been feeding travelers through the Ulzama valley for generations. The dining room is all open fireplace and warm wood, and the traditional menu follows the season faithfully, swinging from wild mushrooms to game as the valley dictates. The views from the terrace over the surrounding hills are the kind that make you order another glass.

Stone bridge on one side, natural swimming pools on the other, and a kitchen pushing Extremaduran seasonal cooking somewhere between tradition and restraint. Veratus is a sit-down Spanish restaurant in the Vera valley where the chef builds the menu around whatever the region is actually producing right now. Two tasting menus are available with advance booking, and the wine pairings lean local.

Named for a plant found only in the Canary Islands, this bistro from the chef behind Michelin-starred Tabaiba operates as his more relaxed alter ego, halfway between Plaza del Pilar and Las Canteras beach. The menu is built for sharing, with regional Canarian cooking given the occasional fusion nudge, and half portions at the bar make it easy to graze without commitment. The kind of place where the chef's restraint turns out to be its own kind of ambition.

Eighteenth-century frescoes of Catalan village life cover the walls of this restaurant, which occupies the grand first floor of a historic aristocratic house in the centre of Vic. The cooking is contemporary Catalan, built around local seasonal produce, with rice dishes for two drawing particular attention. The room alone makes a case for booking a table, and the menu gives you several reasons to stay longer than planned.

A chef came back from Japan with one idea: put the counter at the center and cook in front of everyone, sushi-bar style. The result is a 16-seat tasting menu restaurant with gold tones, geometric ceiling panels, and a single menu that changes with the market. Toledo's old city is right outside; inside, everyone starts at the same time, so don't be late. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

The high ceilings and original bar tell you this place has been around forever, even as the kitchen runs a thoroughly modern line on traditional Catalan cooking. It's a sit-down restaurant on one of Pals's main streets, where the chef, trained across serious kitchens, leans into seasonal ingredients and rice dishes with enough imagination to keep things interesting. The lunch menu is built for sharing, which is either charming or a commitment depending on how you feel about the person across the table.

Ski boots optional, but the name at least sets expectations: Vidocq is a contemporary restaurant in the Pyrenean resort town of Sallent de Gállego, named after France's legendary rogue-turned-detective. A single seasonal tasting menu threads Thai-inflected technique through Aragonese mountain cooking, with most ingredients pulled from small local producers. It's a stranger pairing than it sounds, and somehow the mountains make it make sense.

A courtyard of white-clothed tables, oversized parasols, and trailing greenery sets the scene at this Mediterranean restaurant in a beachside villa on the Costa Brava. The chef apparently traded a DJ booth for a kitchen, and the menu, which runs from prawn tartare to Girona beef cheek, doesn't suggest any lingering indecision. The kind of lunch that makes an afternoon disappear.

A glass-fronted kitchen greets you before you even reach the dining room, which sets the tone: this is a family-run restaurant that wants you watching. The contemporary menu moves between snails and slow-braised Ibérico pork, while the tapas bar on the square does its own thing with small plates and enough foot traffic to keep things noisy. Both rooms are worth knowing about.

A stone manor in vineyard country near Ponte Ulla, Villa Verde is a traditional restaurant where the dining room gathers around a proper lareira fireplace and an old wine cellar still holds a working lagar trough. The cooking is rooted in Galician home tradition, leaning on whatever the season offers, with wild mushrooms and fresh seafood doing most of the talking. Country-house atmosphere without the pretension of needing to perform it.

A thirteenth-century well sits in the dining room floor, glassed over, which sets the tone for this quietly serious restaurant in the old walled town of Morella. The cooking reworks traditional local recipes with modern technique, and the tasting menu leans on nearby producers and whatever the season allows. The room itself, a restored medieval house with a vaulted wine cellar below, does a fair amount of the heavy lifting before the food even arrives.

A terrace overlooking Clos de l'Obac's vineyards and the Priorat mountains sets the tone at this hotel restaurant inside a restored farmhouse deep in wine country. The kitchen works through seasonal Catalan flavors with a contemporary eye and careful plating, offered à la carte or as a tasting menu. The open kitchen is visible through a large window, which means watching the team work is part of the meal whether you signed up for it or not.

Rodrigo de la Calle, the chef who built a reputation around plant-based cooking in Spain, advises this Barcelona restaurant where vegetables grown by small local producers do most of the heavy lifting. A few fish and rice dishes round out the menu, but the point is the plant kingdom, explored across an à la carte and three tasting menus. Dress accordingly: this is the kind of dinner that takes its organic sourcing seriously.

An open kitchen greets you at the door of this gastronomic tavern tucked into a quiet pedestrian street in Reus's old town. The chef cooked in serious kitchens elsewhere before coming home to do his own thing, and the contemporary Catalan menu shows it: sharing plates, a daily menu, and a longer tasting option, all built around local produce handled with a light touch.

Stone walls and Peruvian-Mediterranean cooking in the center of Alacant, where the menu keeps landing somewhere between Valencia and Lima in ways that take a moment to process. The chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu and the Basque Culinary Center before opening this sit-down restaurant, and the rice dishes, finished with South American chiles and aromatics, are where the two kitchens collide most convincingly. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

A renovated house in the quiet Sarrià neighborhood, with a tree-shaded patio that fills up the moment the weather cooperates. This is a Catalan small-plates restaurant where the cooking leans traditional, built around market ingredients and a rotating set of monthly dishes designed to taste like something your grandmother might have made, had she been more precise about it. The ham croquettes have a reputation that precedes them by several rooms.

Quique Dacosta's casual Valencia spot is built around sharing plates and the idea that the menu is more of a suggestion than a contract. The room is loose and lively, cocktails arrive alongside dishes rather than after them, and the foie gras Cuba Libre has become the kind of thing regulars order without looking up. Contemporary cooking with a roaming frame of reference, priced and paced for a long, unhurried table.

Two brothers with Peruvian roots and Basque pantries are doing something quietly unusual in the Deusto university district: a tasting menu that pitches itself as a journey from the Andes to the Bay of Biscay, and mostly earns the metaphor. The restaurant is sleek and contemporary, the cooking precise. Amazonian ingredients show up alongside local produce, and a dessert shaped after the terraced ruins of Moray is the kind of thing you photograph before you eat it.

A short walk from La Pedrera, this creative restaurant runs on a quiet conviction: vegetables come first, sourced from small local producers, and the kitchen is fully open behind the bar so you can watch the team work. Lunch brings à la carte; tasting menus run five or eight courses in vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore tracks. The room has an industrial polish softened by rough-hewn touches, and the wine list leans heavily toward labels you won't recognize, which is sort of the point.

Rice from the Ebro Delta, a region most Barcelonans couldn't point to on a map, anchors the menu at this creative restaurant inside the Ohla Eixample hotel. The chef, originally from Yucatán, has made himself an unlikely authority on that wetland's oysters, elvers, and mantis shrimp, treating them with a light creative hand. The contemporary dining room looks into the kitchen, so you can watch the focus while you eat.

Three tables, eight diners maximum, a calligraphic scroll on the wall, and an omakase menu built around fish the chef ages in-house for texture. This tiny Japanese counter near the old Elvira Gate runs two omakase courses, both centered on nigiri, maki, and gunkan made mostly from local catch, white prawns, Motril shrimp, and eel that arrives alive. Hokkaido scallops make a guest appearance, but Granada's waters do most of the talking.

The rice dishes here require advance notice, which tells you something about how seriously this Valencian restaurant takes them. The menu follows the market and leans on wild-caught fish, but the kitchen's stated philosophy, cooking the old way with a lighter modern hand, runs through everything. The cod fritters have a following of their own. Comfortable and contemporary, the kind of place locals book ahead for a proper midweek lunch.