The Best Spanish Food in the United States

La Loba is the restaurant in the 1 Hotel, serving Catalan small plates built mostly around seafood, which is a very Pacific Northwest thing to do with a Barcelona childhood. The dishes are rustic at heart with a few modernist tricks, like an open-faced montadito topped with cured salmon. The room is dressed up and so is the clientele, and Eater lists it among Seattle's best seafood restaurants. Wear the good shoes.

Four drink menus sorted into categories like "Underappreciated & Misunderstood" and "Rustic & Complex" tell you exactly what kind of wine bar this is. Root & Flower is a cozy, chic spot tucked in Vail Village where fifty wines pour by the glass and the tapas menu is substantial enough to skip a proper dinner after a day on the mountain. Walk-ins welcome, though groups of four or more should book through Resy.

Gazpacho arrives in a glass porrón, and the oysters come buried in a cloud of smoke, because a Barcelona group opening a tapas spot in a Palo Alto shopping center was never going to be subtle about it. The menu runs through pintxos, paella, and Catalonian standards, with a small shop stocking Spanish wines and tinned goods near the door for the ride home.

An industrial-chic small-plates restaurant on Royal Street where the menu leans Gulf-forward with enough global riffs to keep things interesting. The kitchen started as a tapas spot and still thinks in that register, running imaginative little plates alongside proper mains. Save a lane for dessert: the bread pudding with toasted pecans, apples, and bourbon caramel has become something of a local institution. Closed Sundays and Mondays, so plan accordingly.

Mi Luna is a Spanish tapas restaurant with Moorish touches, tucked into the Montrose Collective. It spent two decades in Rice Village, vanished for a while, then reappeared in a shinier address, which is the Houston way. The menu leans on shared plates, a paella built from seafood, meat, and chicken, and a sweet-and-savory Moroccan chicken pie. Come hungry and with friends, because ordering for one defeats the point.

Vaca is a polished Spanish restaurant by the FIGat7th mall, an Orange County import that landed where the consultants and the company cards are. Tapas like gambas al ajillo and croquetas start around $20, ribeyes and paellas run much larger, and the steaks climb past $100. It suits a client dinner, a power lunch, or a parent you'd like to impress. Wear the good blazer, and let the expense report take the hit.

Geometric tilework and honey-hued lighting set the scene at this casual Spanish tapas bar on Columbia Pike, where a pitcher of sangria and a spread of small plates is the whole plan. The kitchen leans into Moorish-influenced staples, bacon-wrapped dates, chickpea stew, mussels with charred bread for sopping. The room rewards lingering, and the crowd tends to take that as a personal challenge.

The Iberian Pig is a fine-dining Spanish restaurant on Overton Street that treats ham as a legitimate afternoon activity. From 4 to 6 every day, the bar serves a board of jamón and cheese with pickles and funky mustards, plus a cheap sangria, so you can feel European on a Tuesday. Dinner runs more formal, and the burnt Basque cheesecake with black garlic dulce de leche is the dessert that talks you out of ordering something safe.