16 Best Restaurants in Bilbao and the Basque Country, Spain

One of the world's great culinary meccas, award-winning Arzak embodies the prestige, novelty, and science-driven creativity of the Basque culinary zeitgeist. The restaurant and its high-tech food lab—both helmed by founder Juan Mari Arzak's daughter Elena these days—are situated in the family's 19th-century home on the outskirts of San Sebastián. The ever-changing dishes (€240 for four courses or €270 for the tasting menu) are downright thrilling for their eye-popping presentations, unexpected flavor combinations, and rare ingredients. The best seats in the house are in the newly renovated upstairs dining room.

This idyllic fourth-generation asador in a centuries-old house draws the crowds with its flawless tortilla de bacalao, txuleta de buey, and local game and fish of all kinds such as besugo a la donostiarra (roast sea bream with garlic-vinegar sauce) and, when in season, becada (Eurasian woodcock) cloaked in meaty wine sauce. Fizzy Txakolí is the standard tipple, but there's also a surprisingly deep list of Champagnes and international bottles to choose from.

Of all the three-Michelin-star temples in Spain, Bittor Arginzoniz's Etxebarri is hands down the most exclusive, since it serves only lunch and reservations are limited. Here, grilling is elevated to an art form, with various types of woods, coals, and handmade tools carefully selected for the preparation of each dish. The obligatory €264 tasting menu (no vegetarian option) generally includes Etxebarri classics like homemade chorizo, smoked caviar, and—if you're lucky—baby elvers. 

The immersive gastro-experience at the envelope-pushing eco-restaurant by renowned Basque chef Eneko Atxa starts with nibbles in the indoor garden, continues on to the kitchen with a quick tour, and culminates in the dining room with a conceptual tasting menu featuring dishes like "dew water" and "essence of the forest."

Four generations ago, Pablo Cámara turned this 19th-century fishing wharf on the Pasaia narrows into a first-class seafood restaurant with lovely views over the shipping lane. A steaming sopa de pescado (fish soup) is just the ticket on a wet Atlantic day, or try cangrejo del mar (spider crab with vegetable sauce) or the superb hake with salsa verde. A central "live" tank rises and falls with the tide and has lobsters and crayfish that can be hauled up for your inspection.

Ever since Anthony Bourdain waxed poetic about award-winning Elkano's grilled turbot on Parts Unknown, the dish has become something of a holy grail among in-the-know foodies. Order the famous flatfish (at its fatty prime in May and June), and you'll receive what Bourdain called an "anatomy lesson" as the maître d' extols the virtues of each separate cut, culminating with the gelatinous fins---which you're encouraged to suck between your fingers, caveman style.

Basque chef Martín Berasategui has more Michelin stars than any other chef in Spain, and at his flagship in the dewy village of Lasarte-Oria, it's easy to see why. Dishes are Basque at heart but prepared with exacting, French-inflected technique that comes through in dishes like artfully composed salads, elegant caviar preparations, and eel-and-foie-gras mille-feuilles—a Berasategui signature. Of all the three-stars in and around San Sebastián, Martín Berasategui—despite its rather lackluster dining room—consistently delivers when it comes to sheer hedonistic deliciousness.

Chef José Miguel Olazabalaga's Aizian is anything but a "hotel restaurant," even if it's situated inside the Meliá Bilbao. Sure, his dishes err on the staid side—you won't find tweezed microgreens and dry-ice displays here—but they're dependably delicious: think sautéed wild mushrooms topped with foie gras and a runny egg or seared venison loin with beets and smoked chestnut puree.

The Txapartegi brothers—Mikel, Kepa, and Gorka—are the decorated chefs behind this restaurant in elegantly restored house with a sunny terrace. Count on seasonally rotated combinations of carefully chosen ingredients, from fish and duck to vegetables.

With a wood-paneled dining room awash with antiques, this family operation is a longtime local favorite for top-quality fish and meats cooked over coals. In the open kitchen, wild lubina (sea bass), rodaballo (turbot), and other regional delicacies from land and sea cook to crackly perfection.

This Nueva Cocina Vasca (New Basque Cuisine) favorite houses two concepts: La Despensa, with vibrant, internationally inflected raciones served beneath neon lights and Edison bulbs, and El Atelier, the sedate, white-tablecloth restaurant serving ultra-high-end seafood-centric tasting menus. Both are terrific in their own right; spring for whichever your budget will allow.

Pamplona's poshest restaurant, in the hotel of the same name, the Europa offers refined, Michelin-starred Navarrese cooking with reasonably priced à la carte dishes as well as excellent tasting menus. The small and bright first-floor dining room is the perfect backdrop to dishes like slow-cooked lamb and pork—and what might be the best bacalao al pil pil you'll ever taste.

If you find yourself in Getxo, the beach town north of Bilbao where the Puente de Vizcaya is located, treat yourself to a meal at this graceful mansion serving mouthwatering dishes like rice with squid and salsa verde and oxtail in Rioja wine sauce. Set menus, ranging in price from €15 to €75 per person, are a good value whether you're looking to save or splurge.

This bucolic farmhouse in the hills above Errenteria, 8 km (5 miles) northeast of San Sebastián, is a veritable laboratory of modern cooking techniques helmed by (arguably) the most experimental chef in Spain today, Andoni Aduriz. The obligatory three-hour, 23-course experience is unabashedly abstract with dishes like "don't search, find" and "tradition: onion and squid," all complemented by zany wild-card wines. The current menu, announced in April 2022, was created in tandem with a Basque filmmaker, a writer, and an illustrator. 

The menu at this award-winning restaurant in the heart of the Parte Vieja hinges on chef Daniel López’s clean, innovative cuisine, which plays on traditional Basque and Spanish flavors and often adds an Asian twist. Opt for a market-driven degustación or López's signature tasting menu, which includes dishes like whole langoustine with Navarrese white beans and Sichuan-spiced squab in liver ragout.

This is the kind of restaurant where the chef greets every table and meals start with an amuse-bouche of foie gras—in other words, a slice of old-school heaven. Market-driven meals (think roasted wild game, tiny de lágrima peas, and strawberry gazpacho) unfold to the backdrop of a 15th-century farmhouse with an ivy-lined patio (the latter is open in summer only).