Spain’s Best Restaurants in the World’s 50 Best 2025: Culinary Icons in Madrid, Barcelona & Basque Country

Bittor Arguinzoniz cooks at Asador Etxebarri, a rustic stone farmhouse tucked into the green hills of Axpe in the Basque Country, where he transforms the humblest ingredients into world-class delicacies using only fire.

There are evenings that pass quietly and then there are nights that change how we understand the world on a plate. The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 was one such night. A celebration of fire and finesse, of philosophy and flavor, where the best culinary minds gathered to honor not just excellence, but emotion.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 didn’t just celebrate food. It traced a map of excellence. A cartography of emotion, tradition, and reinvention. And once again, Spain wasn’t simply featured it led with quiet strength and elemental fire.

This year, four Spanish restaurants claimed their place among the world’s finest:

• No. 2 – Asador Etxebarri (Basque Country)
  Where ancient fire meets elemental perfection. Victor Arguinzoniz continues to turn smoke into language, coaxing soul from ingredient with nothing but ember and instinct.

• No. 4 – DiverXO (Madrid)
  The culinary equivalent of a fever dream. Dabiz Muñoz crafts a surreal tasting odyssey that shocks, seduces, and never repeats itself — a rule-breaking love letter to imagination.

• No. 24 – Elkano (Basque Country)
  A seafood temple where simplicity is the secret. Known for its whole grilled turbot, Elkano captures the Atlantic on a plate with reverence and restraint.

• No. 34 – Enigma (Barcelona)
  A puzzle of a meal. Albert Adrià returns with an immersive dining experience that is theatrical, moody, and uncompromisingly avant-garde — a nod to Catalonia’s disruptive brilliance.

Each speaks a different language. But all whisper the same truth: Spain does not follow trends. It refines its essence until it becomes art.

David Muñoz, the creative force behind DiverXO in Madrid, is a culinary provocateur who transforms fine dining into surreal theatre. Known for his bold imagination and fearless technique, he fuses global flavors into tasting menus that shock, delight, and defy convention proving that chaos, in the right hands, becomes genius.

Spain’s Culinary Landscape: A Journey in Itself

Each of these restaurants tells a different story of place, of family, of fire, of innovation.
Together, they form a tasting map of Spain’s north and east, where the green valleys of the Basque coast, the cosmopolitan pulse of Madrid, and the restless creativity of Barcelona come alive through food.

This is not just a moment of recognition — it’s a call to travel.

Where Fire Meets Philosophy: The Basque Country

Tucked into the green folds of the Basque landscape, Asador Etxebarri reminds us that simplicity is a kind of brilliance. With fire as its only instrument, every ingredient is transformed without being altered. There is no ornament only origin. In this village, the world’s second-best restaurant stands as a quiet giant, feeding both body and soul.

Where Chaos Finds Genius: Madrid

At DiverXO (No. 24), madness and magic swirl on every plate. David Muñoz doesn’t cook. He challenges. He creates stories that are meant to provoke, surprise, and seduce. In the heart of Madrid, where movement never stops, DiverXO offers stillness but only after the storm.

Where Mystery Becomes Mastery: Barcelona

At Enigma, Albert Adrià doesn’t serve food he stages revelation. Behind mirrored halls and shifting lights, every bite is a riddle, every moment designed to unmoor the senses. You enter not knowing, you leave transformed. In Barcelona, Enigma isn’t just a restaurant. It’s an experience you feel long after the last course disappears.

Enigma is Albert Adrià’s most intimate and immersive project to date a gastronomic labyrinth in Barcelona where dining becomes a journey through texture, temperature, light, and shadow.

Spain: Not a Country. A Sensory Map.

To dine in Spain is not just to eat. It’s to understand.
To feel how fire can be an idea.
How silence can taste like seawater.
How cities like Barcelona, Madrid, and the hills of the Basque Country speak different dialects of the same language: culinary intimacy.

And This Is Where We Begin

At OBM Luxury Travel, we believe culinary experiences are the purest expression of a culture’s soul.
That’s why our next curated journey, to be revealed soon, will trace the very footsteps of this list taking you from fire-lit kitchens in the north to tasting salons where the future is plated course by course.

Stay tuned as we unveil our 2025 Spanish Culinary Odyssey, offering behind-the-scenes access to these world-renowned destinations paired with luxury accommodations, private encounters, and the warmth of true connection.