Spanish Food Guide

Prices are what you pay in an ordinary bar or restaurant outside the most touristy streets; expect 20 to 30% more in central Barcelona, Madrid’s Sol and the Balearic resorts.

The Basque Country has the highest density of good cooking in Spain. In San Sebastián, the Parte Vieja (old town) is a grid of pintxo bars: plates on the counter (anchovy and pepper gildas, tortilla, crab tartlets) plus a chalkboard of hot pintxos cooked to order, which are usually the best thing in the room. The local routine is one or two pintxos and a small drink per bar, then move on. Long-running addresses include Ganbara for wild mushrooms, Borda Berri for hot pintxos, La Cuchara de San Telmo, Gandarias, and La Viña for the burnt cheesecake that is now copied worldwide.

Bilbao does the same around Plaza Nueva in the Casco Viejo, slightly cheaper. Drink txakoli, a light, slightly sparkling white poured from a height, or a zurito (a small beer). Outside the cities, asadores grill whole turbot and chuleton over charcoal, and cider houses (sagardotegiak) around Astigarraga, south of San Sebastián, serve a fixed menu of cod omelette, cod, steak and cheese from January to April while you fill your glass straight from the barrel.

Andalusia is the home of the tapa as most people imagine it. In Granada, every drink (a caña of beer at €2.50 to €3.50) still comes with a free tapa, and each round brings a different one; Calle Navas and the bars of the Realejo and Albaicín are the classic crawl. Almería and Jaén keep the same custom, and you can choose your free tapa from a list in many Almería bars.

In Seville you pay for tapas (€3 to €5 each), but the range is wide: espinacas con garbanzos (spinach with chickpeas), solomillo al whisky, montaditos, salmorejo and fried cod. The bars around the Alfalfa, Calle Mateos Gago near the cathedral and across the river in Triana are the places to start, standing at the bar rather than sitting at a terrace that charges more. In Cádiz, Málaga and along the coast, the dish to order is pescaito frito, eaten from a paper cone at a freiduria.

Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María form the sherry triangle. Bodega tours in Jerez cost about €20 to €30 with tastings; in Sanlúcar, drink manzanilla with langostinos at the beachfront Bajo de Guía. Fino and manzanilla are dry and served chilled; they are not the sweet cream sherry exported abroad.

Galicia has the best seafood in Spain at prices well below Madrid. Pulpo a feira is the signature dish, best in a pulperia in inland towns like Melide (on the Camino) or O Carballino, where octopus is the local trade. On the coast, order percebes (goose barnacles, €60 to €120 a kilo and worth trying once), navajas (razor clams), zamburinas (small scallops), and pimientos de Padron. In Santiago de Compostela, Rúa do Franco and Rúa da Raíña are wall-to-wall bars, and the Mercado de Abastos has stalls that will cook what you buy. Drink Albariño from the Rías Baixas or Ribeiro white from a ceramic cup.

In Asturias, cider (sidra) is poured from above the head into a wide glass to aerate it; a bottle costs €3 to €5 in a sidreria in Oviedo’s Calle Gascona or in Gijón. Eat fabada, cachopo (two breaded veal steaks around ham and cheese) and the blue Cabrales cheese from the Picos de Europa.

Paella is from the Valencian countryside, and in Valencia it is a lunch dish, cooked to order in a wide pan for at least two people and served from about 1:30pm, often on Sundays with family. The traditional version has chicken, rabbit, flat green beans, butter beans and sometimes snails, cooked over orange-wood fire until the bottom forms a crust called socarrat. Seafood paella exists too, but locals more often order arroz a banda (rice in fish stock with allioli), arroz negro or fideua, its noodle cousin. The beachfront restaurants on Paseo de Neptuno at Las Arenas and the villages of El Palmar and the Albufera lagoon, 20 minutes south, are where Valencians go; expect €15 to €22 per person.

Also try horchata (a chilled tigernut drink) with long fartons pastries in Alboraya or the old town, and esgarraet (roast peppers with salt cod).

A paella served at 9pm for one person, yellow with colouring and photographed on a board outside, came from a freezer. Pay a little more for a rice restaurant (arroceria) at lunch.

Catalonia cooks with mountain and sea together: pa amb tomaquet with every meal, botifarra sausage with white beans, escalivada (smoky roast vegetables), suquet fish stew, calçots with romesco sauce from January to April, and crema catalana for dessert. Our Barcelona food guide covers the city’s bars, markets such as La Boqueria and Santa Caterina, and where to find real rice dishes. Outside Barcelona, the Costa Brava ports serve anchovies from L’Escala and rice with prawns from Palamós, and the Penedès wine country, an hour from the city, makes most of Spain’s cava.

Madrid draws on every region, so it is the easiest place to sample the whole country in one trip. The local specialities are cocido madrileño (Lhardy and La Bola are classic addresses), callos, and the bocadillo de calamares sold in the bars around Plaza Mayor for €3 to €5. Calle Cava Baja in La Latina is the main tapas street, especially on Sunday after the Rastro flea market. Mercado de San Miguel next to Plaza Mayor is a polished, pricey food hall (€3 to €6 a bite); Mercado de San Fernando in Lavapiés and Mercado de Antón Martín are cheaper and more local. Chocolatería San Ginés, open since 1894, serves churros and chocolate around the clock.

Spaniards eat a light breakfast (coffee and toast with tomato, or a pastry) at 8am, often a mid-morning bocadillo, lunch from 2pm to 4pm and dinner from 9pm or 9:30pm, later in summer and in the south. Many restaurant kitchens close from about 4pm to 8:30pm; tapas bars fill the gap. If you want to eat at 7pm, a bar is your only reliable option.

The menu del dia (also called menu del día) is the best-value meal in the country: a fixed-price weekday lunch with a choice of two or three starters and mains, dessert or coffee, bread and a drink, often a glass of wine. It costs €12 to €16 in most of Spain and €15 to €22 in central Barcelona and Madrid. Look for a chalkboard by the door from about 1:30pm. Dinner is almost always a la carte.

In the Basque Country, take pintxos from the counter onto a small plate, keep track of what you ate (some bars count toothpicks) and tell the barman when you pay. Bills never arrive unless you ask for “la cuenta”. By law you can ask for tap water (agua del grifo) free; it is safe to drink everywhere.

Wine is cheap and good: a glass of house wine (vino de la casa) costs €2.50 to €4 and a decent bottle in a restaurant €15 to €25. The big red regions are Rioja (visit Logroño and its Calle del Laurel tapas street, or the bodegas of Haro and Laguardia) and Ribera del Duero, north of Madrid. Whites include Albariño from Galicia, Verdejo from Rueda and txakoli from the Basque coast. Cava is Catalonia’s sparkling wine; sherry comes from Jerez. Tinto de verano (red wine with lemon soda) is what locals drink on a summer terrace; sangria is mostly ordered by visitors.

Vermouth (vermut) has made a comeback: from about noon on Saturday and Sunday, bars in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia serve red vermouth on tap with ice, an orange slice and an olive, plus a plate of crisps or olives, for €2.50 to €4. “Hacer el vermut” is the pre-lunch ritual.

Beer comes in a caña (about 200ml) or a doble; regional lagers are Mahou in Madrid, Estrella Damm in Catalonia, Estrella Galicia in the north, Cruzcampo and Alhambra in Andalusia. Coffee is espresso-based: café solo (black), cortado (with a dash of milk) and café con leche (milky, a morning drink). A coffee costs €1.40 to €2.20 at the bar.

Tipping is not expected. Locals leave small change at the bar, and after a good restaurant meal a few euros or 5 to 10% is generous; leave it in cash because card terminals often have no tip line. Check the bill for bread, olives or an aperitif you did not order (often €1 to €3 per person, which you can decline when offered) and for a terrace surcharge.

Vegetarians do well in big cities, which have plenty of vegetarian and vegan restaurants, but in traditional bars ham, chorizo and tuna appear in salads, croquetas, stews and vegetable dishes. Ask “¿lleva carne o pescado?” (does it have meat or fish?). Safe orders include tortilla, pimientos de Padron, patatas bravas, gazpacho, salmorejo without the ham topping, and escalivada. Gluten-free (sin gluten) is widely understood, and many bars mark coeliac-safe options.

Cooking classes are easy to find: paella classes in Valencia and Barcelona (about €60 to €90 with a market visit and lunch), and pintxo classes in San Sebastián. Food tours of Seville, Madrid and San Sebastián cost €70 to €130 for three or four bars with food and drinks included.