Whether you order from the à la carte or opt for one of several menus, your experience is taken to the next level if you sit at the Chef's Table, an exclusive space where you can watch the chefs in action through a large window. One innovative dish that is a must here is the “crustacean ravioli and its own essence”, as the delicate ravioli are cooked al dente, have a mouthwatering blue lobster filling, and are served with burrata and a champagne foam.

This restaurant, which always has a waiting list, is characterised by the inventive spirit of the three chefs at the helm (Eduard Xatruch, Oriol Castro and Mateu Casañas) who have made creativity their watchword – clearly their time working alongside Ferran Adrià at El Bulli made a real impression! Choose between two tasting menus: Classic, featuring the restaurant’s signature dishes; and Festival, which showcases its latest seasonal creations.

The cuisine here is centred on a superb menu that invites guests on a gourmet journey extolling the very best seasonal and local ingredients, using them in such a way to extract maximum impact and flavour with a minimum of intervention. This includes standout dishes such as the cured squid with poultry consommé and caviar – a spectacular “sea and mountains” combination. The magnificent wine cellar here is overseen by no fewer than five sommeliers!

Tradition, cutting-edge, flavour, attitude and passion, along with a consistent approach, define to perfection the cooking of Jordi Cruz. In his elegant restaurant, he offers diners a unique gastronomic experience that constantly evolves in line with ingredients from the changing seasons. These are always combined with his technical ability as he revisits Mediterranean flavours with a nod to influences from elsewhere around the globe.

This enchanting restaurant has been designed to enhance the dining experience through different spaces that reflect the family roots and the culinary influences of chef Jordi Artal: the home-made vermouth and appetisers that welcome guests to the Faifó; the move from La Torre de l'Espanyol (Tarragona) to cosmopolitan Barcelona that is explained in the dining room; the Biblioteca Viva (Living Library) where they display jars of fermented products, garums, kombuchas...

Located in the luxurious Hotel Arts and overseen by award-winning chef Paco Pérez, this restaurant serves highly nuanced Mediterranean cuisine that is enriched with international influences and the occasional nod to Asian fusion cooking. The governing principles in the kitchen are underpinned by an utmost respect for seasonal ingredients and a clear goal to elevate traditional dining concepts such as “sea and mountains”.

The Ohla Barcelona hotel’s fine-dining restaurant boasts an unmistakable appearance, due to the “eyes” or “ocular globes” designed by artist Frederic Amat that adorn its neo-Classical façade. French chef Romain Fornell has introduced his new culinary vision that reinterprets concepts and recipes through cooking that features French-influenced Mediterranean cuisine, seasonal ingredients, identifiable flavours and astute pairings.

The fine-dining restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Barcelona hotel is run by Raül Balam, son of the legendary chef Carme Ruscalleda. In addition to his own undeniable individual talent, you’ll note several culinary traits he has inherited from his mother. Dominated by amber and gold tones, the modern dining space also features a window through which it’s possible to watch the team at work in the kitchen.

At this discreet Japanese restaurant, hidden behind a large door that you have to knock on to gain access and which almost seems to be a “secret” address, the concept is based around much more than a working philosophy as the skill of the chef is viewed as a veritable art form here. In this contemporary space, you’ll find a somewhat surprising wood-fired oven in the centre of the dining room, large fish-maturing cabinets, and more conventional tables.

Located just a few steps from Barcelona’s Museu d’Art Contemporani, Dos Palillos has a simple sake bar by the entrance, where you can eat without booking ahead, and a second more gastronomic U-shaped counter around an open kitchen, enabling guests to observe the full preparation process. At this second more attractive and elegant space, you can savour a particularly interesting surprise tasting menu – a fun fusion between Asian cooking and Iberian ingredients.

Alkimia has a somewhat surprising location inside the Moritz beer factory, which has been redesigned as a gourmet complex. In the gastronomic dining room, chef Jordi Vilà conjures up fresh, contemporary cuisine which is deeply rooted in Catalan tradition and has a strong focus on fish. He offers just a single tasting menu entitled Catalan Cuisine Table, divided into six sections, each of which features a good selection of dishes.

In the kitchen, the award-winning chef Jordi Cruz’s modern, creative blueprint is followed to the letter without any unnecessary fuss, but with great care and attention and a sense of freedom. Based around market-inspired ingredients, the cuisine is showcased on a tasting menu that features dishes from the three-starred ABaC alongside others conceived in-house. Everything is in keeping with the restaurant's mission to create “haute cuisine for everyday consumption”.

Incorporated into the hotel lobby, the Oria is a spacious, elegant and unique restaurant run by Xabi Goikoetxea and overseen by master-chef Martín Berasategui, who stamps his indelible hallmark on an updated take on traditional cuisine with its roots in the Mediterranean but with a nod to the Basque Country. The cuisine is centred around three options: the Executive menu, the fixed-price Oria à la carte menu; and, lastly, the Itsasmendi tasting menu.

The first thing to attract your attention at Prodigi is its name, created from the first syllable of three neighbouring streets (Provença, Diagonal and Girona). In this contemporary-style restaurant, à la carte remains faithful to seasonal ingredients despite its concise nature and extols the virtues of traditional Catalan cuisine which it has successfully brought up to date. It is complemented by two menus. Chef Jordi Tarré creates highly elegant dishes full of nuances.

A restaurant with a modern ambience in which the equal measures of technical skill, creativity and delicate touches shown in its dishes will surprise and excite guests. Located closed to the Modernist-style Sant Antoni market, Slow & Low has a concept based around its open kitchen, with two counters that enable guests to experience the creative process to the full. Its internationally inspired cuisine combines ingredients from around the world on three menus.

A dual experience that fuses haute cuisine and architecture? You'll find few more interesting options, as this restaurant is located on the first floor of the famous Casa Fuster, a jewel of Catalan Modernisme designed in the early 20th century by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Jerez-born chef Rafa de Bedoya, under the guidance of the award-winning Paulo Airaudo, brings coherence and flavour based on local, seasonal products. Outstanding dishes? Iberian Flan, Maresme tear peas.

One of Barcelona’s most original dining options, in a city full of restaurants that definitely leave their mark. Here, with chef Riccardo Radice in the kitchen and Giulia Gabriele running the dining room, the first thing that strikes you is the name, Greek in origin, in reference to a particular field of study, in this instance fish and seafood which are treated differently here (through salting, maturing, smoking etc) to create what they call “charcuterie of the sea”.

This spacious and contemporary restaurant will surprise guests as soon as they walk through the door as they are accompanied to two kitchens, for hot and cold food respectively, in which they can try a pleasant array of appetisers and small snacks before being ushered into the elegant dining room. The cuisine here, by celebrity chef Jordi Cruz, showcases contemporary cooking and techniques that aim to highlight the depth of flavours with top-quality ingredients.

This institution in the upper reaches of Barcelona, which has played host to a number of chefs who have gone on to win their own Michelin stars, reflects the love affair that its founder chef, Mey Hofmann, had with food, a legacy that she has passed down to her daughter Silvia and her expert teaching staff. In the restaurant, featuring staff from the school, an à la carte-style menu is available at lunchtime. In the evening, these are replaced by two tasting menus.

A highly original eatery that maintains the essence of the legendary Tickets, but with its own attractive personality. Its name and its meticulous decor are a nod to the theatres located in the city’s Parallel district, a sensation enhanced by the menu, which is presented almost like the script of a play, and includes the cast of all the cooks and waiters. This provides the backdrop for fun, varied cuisine in the shape of numerous snacks, tapas and a few classic recipes.

The discreet façade hides a fantastical interior where originality is combined with the most radical design, as the striking ceilings seem to be suspended and, as a whole, it is reminiscent of... a futuristic cold room! Chef Albert Adrià presents a unique seasonal tasting menu, of about 25 courses in which he displays all his knowledge, with many of his visual elaborations finished before the customer's eyes so that we are aware of the innumerable techniques.

At the helm here is chef Paco Méndez, who has taken over the reins with his wife and head pastry chef Erinna to give the format a new twist in which he showcases “the coming together of Mexican culture and cooking, Mediterranean ingredients and the legacy of El Bulli”. The experience starts with welcome drinks and snacks as soon as you walk through the door before heading to the dining room where you can discover the flavours of this Central American country.

Named after an aromatic Mediterranean plant, this Michelin-starred restaurant has been enjoying the fruits of its success for some time now, in part due to its competitive pricing. In the contemporary, minimalist-style dining room, chef Oriol Ivern serves fresh, creative dishes that offer a different take on Catalan culinary tradition, and are always based around locally sourced seasonal ingredients and impressive combinations.

The gourmet restaurant at the Intercontinental Barcelona is another example of a hotel keen to diversify its services for guests by transforming itself into a foodie destination in its own right. Quirat, which has its own independent entrance, represents, in its own words, “the purity and wealth of the elements that form the land”. Chef Víctor Torres, who is renowned for his cuisine at the Michelin-starred Les Magnòlies in Arbúcies, creates contemporary Catalan cuisine.

This restaurant brings together the knowledge and dreams of three friends: Mariella Rodríguez (Costa Rica, in charge of management) and chefs Diego Mondragón (Colombia) and Germán Espinosa (Spain). It is surprising to see that they combine products from very different origins, which leads us to see how Galician clams or the legendary tarta de Santiago work with, for example, Latin American chilli peppers and tepache.

Almost everyone in Barcelona is aware of the legendary culinary status of Via Veneto! To an elegant and genuine Belle Époque backdrop, young chef David Andrés maintains the culinary status quo here through cuisine that underpins its classical heritage, albeit with a focus on a more modern technical approach and a select array of ingredients. Delicious game dishes (hare royale, red partridge with stewed cabbage, loin of venison etc) are also on the menu in season.

An intimate Japanese-style restaurant close to Sants railway station, featuring a bar where guests can eat while watching young chef Yoshikazu Suto at work. The ambience here is more that of a private house in which the staff are cooking for you rather than a restaurant. The Omakase menu on offer here (which combines hot and cold dishes and is served to all guests at the same time) features highly personalised Japanese-style recipes, followed by delicious nigiri.

Here, chef Artur Martínez is breaking the culinary mould with his perception of gastronomy which involves “cooking that is straightforward but not simple”, with a complete focus on local ingredients, individual connections with producers and the raison d’être of each dish. The experience, which starts with an appreciation of limited-production Becaruda olive oil from centuries-old trees, is centred around locally sourced ingredients, such as white alubia beans from Ganxet.

The best aspect of this kind of family-run restaurant is the unhurried and stress-free approach which is very much in keeping with the principles of the Slow Food movement. The focus of the married couple that run and own Lluerna, Víctor Quintillà (in the kitchen) and Mar Gómez (front of house), is on sustainable cuisine that champions locally sourced ingredients (chicken from the Penedés area, Duroc pigs, Xisqueta lambs, pigeon from the Tatjé family etc).

Here, in a modern yet welcoming ambience, discover chef Miquel Aldana’s propensity for high-quality Catalan cuisine that is contemporary in style, adapted to seasonality and firmly connected to the surrounding El Maresme area of Barcelona province. Tresmacarrons’ culinary philosophy is based around the pleasure of a job well done and complete commitment, as demonstrated by its tasting menus (Corto, Tresmacarrons y Fiesta Mayor).