The 10 best restaurants in Alicante

Telegraph

09-05-2025

Starting with the prime raw materials sourced right on its doorstep, from locally landed fish and shellfish to magnificent fruit and vegetables, Alicante is a gastro-capital with few rivals on the Spanish Med. There are good things at every level of its diverse restaurant ecosystem. At the top of the food chain, chefs Maria José San Román and Pablo Montoro are forging a contemporary cuisine that manages to be genuinely alicantino. Then come the classy tapas bars, the bustling beer halls, and the specialist arrocerias showcasing the city's unbridled passion for rice.
For more inspiration, see our guides to the perfect weekend in Alicante, and the best hotels, bars and things to do.
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Best all rounders
Nou Manolín
Time-honoured and much-loved, Nou Manolín is a shoe-in for the best gastrobar in Alicante. Founded in 1971 by Vicente Castelló whose descendants still run the place a half-century later, this is a temple to local ingredients at their finest and freshest. Glass-fronted vitrines are arrayed with fish, shellfish, and vegetables destined to be fried, char-grilled, or sizzled a la plancha – highlights being the succulent red Dénia prawns and the calamares a la romana (battered squid rings), an exemplary version of a Spanish classic. The atmosphere around the square-shaped bar is one of jollity and pure enjoyment.
Contact: grupogastronou.com
Reservations: walk-in
Price: ₤₤
Dársena
Alicante prides itself on the diversity and excellence of its native rice cookery, which believed by many Spanish food experts to be superior to that of Valencia. Among the city's many rice-forward restaurants, one is practically a household name: Dársena, now sitting pretty in a glass-fronted harbourside locale flooded with Mediterranean light. The richly savoury arroces are cooked alicantino-style, thinly layered in the paella pan. The rice menu offers exquisite combos like wild garlic and baby squid, with monkfish and spinach, crayfish and loquats – but even something as simple as arroz con gambas (with prawns) is impeccably done.
Alasazón
Tucked within the eco-themed Hotel Serawa, Alasazón is one of several bright sparks on an old-town street (Calle San Fernando) that had become sadly under-powered despite its location just behind the famous Explanada. The ground-floor locale, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling and bare stone walls, cheekily channels the kind of old-fashioned alicantino bar where you might be offered a tapa of figatell de sepia (cuttlefish 'meatballs') or a slab of cured tuna mojama along with your vermouth on the rocks. For a front-row experience of Alasazón's retro-modern vibe, settle into the chic chairs ranged along the bar-top.
Contact: alasazon.es
Reservations: recommended
Price: ₤₤
Fondillón
The name, referring to Alicante's legendarily long-lived wine, is a statement of intentions: alicantino gastronomy is front and centre at this old-town restaurant within the Hotel Hospes Amérigo. Which means a menu rich in localisms like char-grilled octopus with hazelnut romesco, crisp coca with smoked sardine and roast-pepper titaina, and rice dishes like the superb arroz a banda with saffron allioli. Local wines are forefronted too: try one from Enrique Mendoza, pioneer among the new-wave bodegas of the province. The room, coolly Mediterranean in its mint-green walls and rush-matting floors, is good for a relaxed midweek dinner.
Casa Filo
Little has changed, in the ways that matter, about this gloriously authentic establishment since its foundation in 1953 by Filomena and Ramón (whose grandchildren now run the place) in a rustic shack behind Albufereta beach. Least of all the menu, which still runs to classic paellas and other rice dishes cooked over a wood fire (rabbit and snails is a speciality) with pots of green-gold, garlicky allioli served on the side. Lunch at Casa Filo is a homely affair: children are encouraged to play on the garden swings, while dogs are offered shade and water bowls.
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Best for fine dining
Espacio Montoro
Montoro lies outside the usual run of Alicante restaurants – in every sense. First there's the location, well off the tourist trail and a pilgrimage site for admirers of 21st-century Spanish cuisine in all its slightly bonkers glory. Chef Pablo Montoro parlays left-field ingredients such as seaweeds, fungi and Japanese vegetables into a brilliantly original 20-course tasting menu employing all manner of sensorial tricks and theatrical settings. (The 'initiation' happens in a special chamber plunged into total darkness.) When Montoro's inventions hit the spot – like the strip of wagyu beef you're invited to dangle in the flames of Talisker whisky – they're unforgettable.
La Ereta
If location trumps everything in restaurants, La Ereta may be the best in town. A flat-roofed modernist pavilion, it perches on the hillside below the castle of Santa Bárbara, with mesmerising views of the city and ocean through floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows. Alicante-born chef Dani Frías does his best to distract your attention from That View with a tasting menu (95€) that switchbacks between local inspirations like caldereta de gamba roja (a casserole of red prawns, intensely flavoured) and cunning inventions of his own. His super-fresh gazpacho of green tomato, shrimps and cucumber is an idea whose time has come.
Contact: laereta.es
Reservations: essential
Price: ₤₤₤
Restaurante Monastrell
The all-white dining room, on the upper floor of a harbourside building within a few steps of the sea, reverberates with Alicante's dazzling natural light. Chef Maria José San Román's reputation, forged over three decades at the helm of Monastrell, is for an avant-garde Spanish cuisine that is never pretentious or attention-seeking but delicate and soulful. On any given day San Román's short seasonal menu, sourced largely from her own vegetable garden at Terramón, might offer a richly soupy rice with baby cuttlefish, pumpkin and artichoke, a silky beetroot soup with caviar, or a iced cream of almond turrón with figs.
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Best for walk ins
Abarrote
If the range of eating places along the Explanada can make choosing difficult, here's a sure-fire hit. Buzzy and laid-back, but refreshingly un-touristy, Abarrote has the look currently in vogue in Spain, all rough wood and black-painted metal. Perch at a high table and graze on a tapas-style menu taking in goose egg with pericana, tomato salad with Mutxamel goat cheese, and a croqueta of spinach and walnuts that's the best example of this sub-genre you're likely to try. Delve into the 330-strong wine list for local gems like the 2010 Príncipe Salinas red from Bodegas Gutiérrez de la Vega.
El Cantó
Alicante lacks the plethora of tapas tavernas you might find in other Spanish cities, which makes El Cantó even more loveable. It's a classic cervecería (beer bar) on a corner site, wood-lined and cosy, where the same García family has run the show for four decades. Elbow your way towards the bar and ask (you might have to shout) for a plate of salchichón and a marinera – the house speciality, a crisp bread-stick topped with ensaladilla rusa and an anchovy fillet – along with a well-poured glass of beer. Continue your tapas crawl with pit-stops at Sento and Nou Manolín.
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How we choose
Every restaurant in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, who has visited to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets, from neighbourhood favourites to Michelin-starred restaurants – to best suit every type of traveller's taste – and consider the food, service, best tables, atmosphere and price in our recommendations. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest opening and provide up to date recommendations.
About our expert
Paul Richardson fled the UK for Spain in 1989, alighting first in Ibiza, then remote Extremadura where he now lives off-grid on an organic farm. Read about it in his latest book Hidden Valley (Abacus).