Spanish restaurant is TripAdvisor world number one; two others in top 25

A RESTAURANT in Spain has been named 'best in the world' in a TripAdvisor poll, and the top 25 has a total of three eateries in the country.

The eponymous Restaurante Martín Berasategui (first picture), in Lasarte – just a few miles south of San Sebastián in the Basque Country – is described in the most recent comment as 'the best combinations of flavours ever experienced' in a meal which was 'culinary poetry'.

The service is also considered to be outstanding, and praise has been heaped on the three-Michelin-starred restaurant by visitors from Canada, Jordan, Puerto Rico, Germany and the UK, among others.

At number 11 out of the world's top 25 is El Celler de Can Roca in Girona (second picture), which has also been voted 'best in Spain' on previous occasions and even 'best in the world' once.

Comments refer to it as 'outstanding', 'brilliant', 'sublime', 'perfect', and 'insanely good' – and despite its Michelin stars, customers were surprised at how comparatively cheap the wine was.

One reviewer booked online from Hawaii and said it was completely worth the journey, and another from Hong Kong said his Michelin-starred restaurant experiences usually leave him 'disappointed and still hungry afterwards', but that El Celler de Can Roca 'deserves to be named the best in the world'.

The lowest-rated in the top 25 in the world – still an extremely prestigious honour, when considering the average tourist hotspot in Spain would have more than 25 restaurants on one street alone – is El Club Allard in Madrid, in a 19th-century English-style stately home just off the central Plaza de España but serving modern fusion cuisine which a reviewer from Belgium said was 'the best food he had ever tasted' and another from Atlanta, Georgia (USA) said deserved a third Michelin star.

As well as the USA, El Club Allard attracted superlative comments from customers who had travelled from The Netherlands, Norway and even Kuwait.

Any restaurant critic would agree that to delight customers with such a vast cultural background and dramatically-diverse culinary tastes would be an admirable and very difficult feat, as is gaining one Michelin star, let alone three – but Spain is replete with restaurants of this type in almost every province.

Whilst TripAdvisor's highest-rated Spanish restaurants are in the north, traditional holidaymaker hotspots on the Mediterranean and the south coast offer a huge range of Michelin stars to choose from, some only a few kilometres apart – in recent years the restaurant formerly known as El Poblet, and re-named Quique Dacosta after its owner and head chef, was voted top eatery in the world, and has featured on much-watched dining programmes on UK television.

Restaurante Quique Dacosta is based in Dénia (Alicante province) near the beach, and just 20 minutes away by road is the newly Michelin-starred Bon Amb in Jávea.

First-time stars are given to at least 10 or 20 Spanish restaurants a year, and many more see another one added each time the new annual Michelin guide is published.

As for the rest of the TripAdvisor world top 25, three of these are in France (PIC, in Valence, Épicure in Paris, and Maison Lameloise in Chagny), three in the UK (Adam's of Birmingham, Sat Bains in Nottingham and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton), two in Denmark (the former world number one Noma, and Geranium, both in Copenhagen), two in the USA (in New York and Chicago) and one each in Indonesia (in Ubud), Canada (Montréal, in Québéc), China (Beijing), The Netherlands (The Hague), United Arab Emirates (Dubai), Japan (in Minato), New Zealand (Auckland), Greece (Athens), South Africa (in Woodstock), Australia (in Melbourne), Argentina (Buenos Aires), and Chile (Santiago).