The Best Spanish Food in the United Kingdom

The wood-fired grill does a lot of heavy lifting at this sprawling two-floor Soho restaurant from the team behind Brat and Kiln. Welsh and Spanish influences collide on a menu built for sharing, running from raw red prawns with stracciatella to whole lobster caldereta served in an earthenware pot. A Michelin star sits alongside a genuinely casual atmosphere where dropping in for one glass and a snack is as welcome as a full feast. The wine list runs to around 500 bottles.

Nieves Barragán Mohacho's Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant in Shoreditch is built around whole-animal butchery done in-house, with a menu of fifty-odd dishes that skips the paella-and-patatas greatest hits in favor of lesser-known regional cooking. The double-height room pairs exposed brick with terracotta and plaster pink, and the open kitchen is theatrical enough that counter seats are their own entertainment. The all-Spanish wine list keeps the theme honest.

Named after the Old English word for turbot, this Shoreditch restaurant from Tomos Parry takes its cues from the fire-powered port restaurants of the Basque coast. The whole turbot, grilled in a handmade basket over lumpwood charcoal, is what the room is built around, though the beef cuts and mutton chop make a strong case for their share of the table. It holds a Michelin star and a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which is a range most places don't attempt.

Nieves Barragán Mohacho built her reputation at Barrafina, and Sabor on Heddon Street is where she went fully her own way. The ground floor runs as a lively tapas counter and bar, no reservations, seats gone fast; upstairs, El Asador takes bookings and centres on a wood-fired oven where Segovian suckling pig arrives crackling and serious. It holds a Michelin star, and the Chef of the Year nod from the National Restaurant Awards follows her here.

A converted warehouse in Farringdon where the open grill is the architecture, not the decor. Ibai is a Basque grill restaurant built around Galician Blond beef from mature dairy cows, dry aged and cooked over a multi-tier charcoal fire at different heights depending on the cut. The sourcing decisions happen long before the kitchen does. It lands at number seven on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, and the wine list leans hard into Spain.

The stainless steel frying counters and Formica floors are still here from the chip shop this used to be, but the kitchen is now doing Basque-inflected seafood with serious intent. Order vermouth over ice at the front bar, or book one of the handful of tables out back for something more substantial. The chips bravas, made with beef dripping, have acquired the kind of following that makes regulars territorial about them. It landed on the National Restaurant Awards list in 2026.

A wood-clad, firelit Spanish restaurant tucked inside a boutique hotel on Quay Street, built around an asador grill that earns its place at the centre of the room. Squid, celeriac, and rump steak all go over charcoal, and the wine list runs almost exclusively Spanish, with producers obscure enough to feel like a discovery. Grab a seat overlooking the grill or the glass-fronted wine cave, and let someone else order the boquerones with yuzu dressing so you can steal a bite.

A pintxos bar and a casual restaurant sharing one Newquay address, Counter Culture holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for cooking that lands somewhere between the Basque coast and Cornwall. Drop into the bar without a booking for cocktails and snacks, or sit down for the fuller menu, where the kitchen runs local seafood and produce through a Spanish filter with real conviction. The wine list is considered, and the crema catalana travels well.

The name translates as "I eat," which sets expectations correctly. This buzzing Belfast tapas brasserie earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand on the strength of shareable plates built around a Bertha oven, with traditional Spanish touches running alongside them. Counter seats overlook the kitchen if you like that kind of theatre. The room skews rustic-industrial, the crowd leans into it, and the standing advice is to leave room for the orange and almond sponge.

Counter seats facing an open kitchen on the first floor give you the best view of the Josper grill doing its work at this tapas bar spread across three floors on a pedestrianised stretch of King Street. The ground floor has a proper bar, the roof terrace is up top, and a crema catalana on the menu keeps the classical end honest. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the room is loud in the way that means people are having a good time.

A wood-burning oven anchors the open kitchen of this modern sharing-plates restaurant inside a traditional Yorkshire stone building. The menu has a Spanish spine, croquetas and boquerones and the like, but roams freely from Mexican tacos to Vietnamese prawn toast before landing back home for sticky toffee pudding. It earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the closely-set dark wood tables tend to fill early with locals who have clearly done this before.

A whitewashed Georgian townhouse on a Hampshire market-town high street is an unlikely home for a Spanish tapas bar, but that contrast is the whole point. The kitchen handles the classics, boquerones, tortillas, with evident confidence, and the wine list runs exclusively Spanish. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks given the price point. Noisy, warm, and the kind of place you linger in without quite meaning to.

The only Barrafina in the small chain that won't take a booking, which means joining the queue, but the L-shaped counter and a glass of something cold make the wait feel intentional rather than punishing. It's a tapas bar in Soho, loud and lively, with a blackboard of the day's catch sitting beside the printed menu. Order the tortilla first, then start eyeing what the person next to you is having.

Fire is the organizing principle at Alta, a Northern Spanish sharing-plates restaurant tucked across two floors of Kingly Court in Soho. The menu leans on Navarra influences, running everything from Middlewhite pork to white beetroot through the flames for a char that ties the room together. The team navigates the menu with you rather than reciting it at you, which in this neighborhood counts for something.

A vintage stainless steel counter runs along what used to be a chemist's, which tells you most of what you need to know about Arbequina's low-key charm. This tapas bar on Cowley Road keeps the menu short and the portions generous, mixing Spanish classics with the occasional Middle Eastern detour. Spanish wines and natural bottles round out a drinks list that matches the room: relaxed, a little bohemian, and not trying too hard.

Quique Dacosta's Fitzrovia restaurant is built around rice, specifically the Valencian paella in more forms than you thought possible, from pork knuckle to tofu and sea lettuce. It's a big, dramatically designed dining room, and the ground floor seats put you close enough to the open kitchen to watch the wood-fired stoves throw actual flames, which is the kind of dinner theatre that earns its place on the bill.

A sibling to Italian spot Benoli just down the road, Bar Cerdita is a compact, rustic tapas bar where the blackboard changes daily and sharing is quietly non-negotiable. The menu runs through the Spanish canon, pan con tomate, pork in several forms, and a tarta de Santiago finished with olive oil ice cream. A short Spanish wine list and a cocktail of the day keep things moving. Small room, convivial noise, exactly the kind of place you stay longer than planned.

Twenty seats arranged at a counter where the kitchen team cooks, plates, and serves everything themselves, which at least settles the question of who to flag down. This intimate modern restaurant in the heart of Bury St Edmunds runs sharing plates at lunch and a tasting menu at dinner, leaning into Spanish flavors with a restrained hand. The bread and desserts come from the chef's wife, which sounds like a division of labor that works out very well for the room.

Counter seats at the open kitchen, high-tops pressed close together, and a room that's been packed since it opened, José is a no-bookings tapas bar on Bermondsey Street that started the whole José Pizarro empire. The menu runs classic Spanish, acorn-fed jamón and all, and the drill is simple: arrive early, stake a spot, and order while you can. A Michelin Selected Restaurant, and one that still draws a crowd like it has something to prove.

Open flames on the ground floor and a quieter dining room upstairs, in a brightly decorated Cambridge townhouse steps from Trinity College. This Spanish restaurant pulls heavily from the north, Galicia and the Basque Country mostly, with Ibérica cuts cooked over fire and a tarta de Santiago to finish. The kind of place where the cooking is the decor, and nobody's complaining about that.

A wood-fired oven and glowing coals dominate the open kitchen at this lively restaurant overlooking Liberation Square in Saint Helier. The cooking draws on time spent in the Basque Country, so Jersey ingredients meet fire-based techniques, and cuts like turbot and ex-dairy cow share the menu with Ibérico ham collar. A few counter seats put you right in the heat, literally and otherwise.

Cooking over an open flame anchors the menu at this small-plates Spanish and Mediterranean spot in Mossley Hill, which moved out of the city centre and leaned into the neighbourhood feel. Tables are close together and the room is cosy in the way that encourages overstaying. If you want to watch the fire up close, the chef's counter is the seat to book. The Michelin Guide has it listed among its selected restaurants.

The fish counter hits you before you've found a seat, and the wood-fired grill does the rest. This Victorian corner pub in Belgravia has been converted into a Basque-leaning restaurant where the cooking follows the chef's family heritage: good fish, good meat, live fire. The torrija with Guinness ice cream is one of those desserts that makes you wish you'd skipped the bread. Pimlico Road money fills the room, but the food has a rougher, more satisfying edge.

The floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Speyside valley on one side; a whisky wall does the same on the other. This fine dining restaurant sits above The Macallan's distillery, with a menu shaped by the Roca brothers of El Celler de Can Roca, so Catalan technique turns up alongside Scottish ingredients in ways you didn't expect. The whisky pairing is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the move here.

The txuleton, a thick bone-in steak from older Basque cattle, is cooked over a wood-fired grill with nothing but salt and a lot of patience. This Shoreditch asador brings Basque grilling culture to London without softening it for the audience, and the room, all wooden tables and open flames, smells accordingly. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tells you what to order. Service runs on warmth rather than ceremony, the way it would back in San Sebastián.