The Best Spanish Food in New York

The kitchen butchers whole animals in-house, which tells you something about how seriously this compact Spanish tapas bar on Irving Place takes its sourcing. Dishes arrive in a sensible order, not all at once, and they're sized to actually eat rather than admire. A Michelin star and a New York Times top-100 nod haven't made it precious. Order widely, resist keeping track, and plan to wish everything were slightly larger.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. AAA Three Diamonds
3. The New York Times 2015 · 3 stars · Restaurant Review

Marble-top bar, globe pendants, and coffee-brown tables give this Basque restaurant on the Lower East Side a midcentury feel that somehow never reads as costume. The room runs loud and convivial, the way a good tapas night should, and everything is built for sharing. The wine list leans deep into small Spanish organic and biodynamic producers, which is either very convenient or a very pleasant trap, depending on your evening.

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. The New York Times 2021 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
3. The New York Times The Restaurant List

Low ceilings with thick wood beams, amber light, and banquettes that make every table feel like a booth in the back of someone's private club. Bartolo is a Spanish restaurant in the West Village, the kind where you order oxtail braised in red wine and suckling pig and let the table fill up. The martini list has its own following, and the servers are sharp enough to keep a long night moving without making it feel rushed.

1. Esquire Martini de Bartolo · The Best Martinis in America
2. The New York Times 2025 · 1 star, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Ricardo Rodriguez
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
3. NJ.com #26 · New Jersey’s 99 greatest restaurants, ranked

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants in New York City
2. The New York Times #64 · The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chelsea

José Andrés runs this steakhouse inside the Ritz-Carlton NoMad like a controlled burn, with an open charcoal and wood-fired kitchen that fills the room with smoke and a sense of occasion that most restaurants wouldn't dare attempt. The cuts run American and Japanese, aged both ways, cooked over fire that does real work rather than just looking good. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tracks.

1. World's 101 Best #71 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Approved
2. NJ.com #98 · New Jersey’s 99 greatest restaurants, ranked

The slow-roasted suckling pig leg that anchors the menu tells you this isn't your standard tapas crawl. La Vara is a cozy Spanish restaurant in Cobble Hill where the kitchen takes cocina casera, home cooking, as both its premise and its ambition. Alex Raij's food has a playful, quietly inventive quality; the room draws the kind of neighborhood regulars who eventually stop looking at the menu and just tell the server to do whatever.

1. The New York Times 2012 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Rachel Miller
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Alex Raij and Eder Montero

Dress code enforced, portions sized for sharing, and a dining room that leans into Old World Spanish formality with enough commitment to make Newark feel briefly far away. This is a long-running Spanish restaurant where seafood paella and shellfish casserole anchor a menu built around generous plates of fresh seafood and steak. The kind of place where the garlic shrimp arrives without irony and regulars know better than to show up in sneakers.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A whole leg of jamón ibérico mounted on a carving stand anchors the room, which tells you most of what you need to know. This is Jose Andres's live-fire steak counter inside Mercado Little Spain at Hudson Yards, built around a wood-burning Basque-style grill. The steaks are the point, though the carnivorous atmosphere is half the meal. Somehow it also manages to be family-friendly without feeling like a concession, which in Manhattan is its own quiet trick.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A 60-day aged Txuleton ribeye, cooked over a charcoal-fired grill and a Spanish wood oven, is the reason this Basque steakhouse inside Mercado Little Spain exists. The kitchen splits its sourcing between American producers and Spanish importers, which puts Ibérico pork and Spanish lamb alongside the beef with a logic that holds. Sommeliers steer you toward Spanish bottles, and the martini comes with olive oil-infused gin and a Basque gilda, because of course it does.

1. World's 101 Best #70 · World's Best Steak Restaurants

1. The New York Times 2022 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. The New York Times 2013 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review