Best Restaurants in Xàbia: Fine Dining, Local Gems & Where to Eat

Here is the confession: Xàbia is not, on first inspection, a place you visit for the food. The old town is beautiful, the coves are extraordinary, the light in September does something peculiar to the water that no photograph has ever successfully captured. But food? You come for the sea. You come for the stillness. And then, somewhere between a plate of Dénia red prawns and a second glass of whatever the sommelier at BonAmb has just placed in front of you with an almost imperceptible smile, you realise that you came for entirely the wrong reasons – and arrived at exactly the right ones.

The best restaurants in Xàbia represent one of the Costa Blanca’s most quietly serious dining scenes. Two Michelin-starred establishments operate within a few kilometres of each other on this small cape. A third holds a Michelin recommendation. The rice dishes served in the old town would cause a scene in Valencia. And yet the town itself remains relaxed about all of this, which is perhaps its greatest achievement.

What follows is a guide to eating exceptionally well in Xàbia – from the formal and the Michelin-blessed to the beach-facing and the brilliantly local.

Fine Dining in Xàbia: The Michelin Stars

BonAmb sits on the road between Xàbia and El Poble Nou de Benitatxell, set back from the coast in a restored country house with gardens that, on a warm evening, make you feel the world has been paused specifically for your benefit. Chef Alberto Ferruz holds two Michelin stars here – which, in a town of this size, is either a remarkable coincidence or a rather pointed argument that geography is no obstacle to greatness. Almost certainly the latter.

Ferruz’s cooking is rooted deeply in this specific piece of coastline. He draws on the history and landscape of Xàbia itself – the fish pulled from these waters, the seafood that thrives in the rocky coves, the herbs that grow wild across the flanks of Montgó, the gardens that supply produce of quiet, insistent quality. The result is creative Mediterranean cuisine that never strays so far into abstraction that you lose the thread back to the sea. This is food that knows where it is from.

A reservation at BonAmb requires planning. Book well in advance – weeks at minimum, months if you want a Saturday in high season. The tasting menu is the way to go. Clear your evening. This is not a place you leave in a hurry, and you will not want to.

Then there is Tula, which manages the remarkable trick of holding a Michelin star while still feeling, genuinely, like somewhere you stumbled upon rather than researched. Located on Avenida Ultramar at Arenal Beach, chef Borja Susilla and Clara Puig earned their star in 2019 and have held it with the kind of quiet confidence that suggests they were never particularly anxious about it. The open kitchen means the kitchen theatre is part of the experience – you watch the team work with the focused calm of people who are very good at what they do and see no particular need to perform that fact.

The Michelin Guide specifically calls out the turbot pil-pil, with its smoky depth, as a dish worth noting. It is worth more than noting. Local ingredients – artichokes, wild mushrooms, those extraordinary Dénia red prawns – are handled here with the kind of precision that makes you reassess what the word “refined” actually means. Relaxed in atmosphere, serious in intent. One of Xàbia’s most rewarding tables.

Tosca, in the Arenal beach area near the Canal de la Fontana, rounds out the Michelin-recommended triumvirate with an angle that surprises: Franco-Belgian roots adapted to the Mediterranean. Chef Julien produces a menu built on the harmony between ingredients – a philosophy that sounds simple and is, in practice, extraordinarily difficult to execute. The restaurant takes its name from the tosca stone native to Xàbia, which features throughout the interior and gives the space a quietly distinctive character. Recommended by the Michelin Guide since 2021. Worth knowing about before your neighbour at the villa does.

Local Gems: Where Xàbia Actually Eats

The Michelin stars are genuinely earned and worth every course. But Xàbia’s dining identity is not built exclusively in those rooms. Some of the most pleasurable eating happens in the old town, where El Trinquet has been serving rice dishes and seafood of first-class quality with the kind of steadiness that resists fashion and is better for it.

The Repsol Guide – Spain’s other great arbiter of culinary seriousness – has long recommended El Trinquet for its rice and for what the guide calls “first-class seafood products brought from the market.” In 2024, the restaurant was elevated to Solete distinction, a promotion that came with a personal recommendation from none other than Alberto Ferruz of BonAmb. When the chef with two Michelin stars in the same town singles out your rice dishes, you are clearly doing something right.

The menu covers the range of Xàbia’s traditional cooking – fresh fish, beautifully sourced seafood, varied dishes that change with what the market offers. The atmosphere is warm, the room is honest, and the rice – whether arrós a banda, caldoso, or whatever the kitchen has decided to do with it that week – is the kind of thing you find yourself thinking about on the drive back to the villa. Go at lunch. Order the rice. Let the afternoon unfold at its own pace.

La Perla de Jávea, sitting directly on the promenade at Playa del Arenal, has been mentioned in the Michelin Guide every year since 2018 – a consistency that speaks for itself. Chefs Sonia and Vicky run a kitchen committed to traditional Mediterranean cooking, and the rice here is the star of the menu, as it perhaps always should be when you are sitting metres from the sea on the Costa Blanca. The location is one of those that feels almost too obvious – first-line beach dining, the water visible from your table – and yet the cooking ensures you spend more time looking at your plate than at the view. High praise, in context.

Beach Dining and Casual Eating

Xàbia has three distinct beach areas – the old port, Arenal, and the rockier, more secluded Granadella – and each has its own character when it comes to eating. The Arenal promenade offers the greatest concentration of options, from the Michelin-recognised (Tula, La Perla de Jávea, Tosca) to the cheerfully casual. Paella is served in the sun here by places that have been doing exactly this for decades, without particular fuss or Instagram ambition.

For a more relaxed meal that still takes quality seriously, the beach clubs and terraced restaurants along the Arenal waterfront offer fresh fish, cold local rosé, and the particular pleasure of eating with sand nearby. Lunch is the meal here – the Spanish approach to midday, which involves more time and more courses than most northern Europeans expect and absolutely everyone leaves happier for.

The old port area, quieter and less visited than Arenal, has a handful of smaller places serving the catch of the day with minimal intervention. If you see locally caught red mullet on the menu, order it. If you see it described in more than two words, consider whether you needed the additional description.

What to Order in Xàbia

The Montgó massif and the sea define what ends up on the plate here. Rice dishes are the cornerstone of the local table – arrós a banda (rice cooked in fish broth, served with alioli), caldero (a rich, deeply flavoured fish and rice stew), and various forms of seafood rice that exist at different points along the spectrum from brothy to socarrat-crusted. Do not leave Xàbia without eating rice that was made with serious intent.

Seafood is the other argument. The red prawns from nearby Dénia are among the finest in Spain – sweet, intense, and best treated with the restraint they deserve. Grilled, briefly, with good olive oil. That is all. Cuttlefish, sea bass, sea bream, and the various clams and mussels that come from these waters all appear regularly on menus and repay ordering.

Locally foraged herbs and wild mushrooms from the Montgó appear in the more ambitious kitchens, and the vegetable gardens of the interior supply produce of genuine quality. The artichokes, in season, are exceptional. The olive oil produced in the surrounding area is worth bringing home in quantities that will cause discussion at the airport.

Wine and Local Drinks

The Marina Alta denomination – which covers Xàbia and the surrounding area – produces wines of growing confidence. The Moscatel grape grows here with particular ease and produces a range of styles from sweet and dessert-oriented to drier, more structured expressions that pair well with the local seafood. It is the kind of wine that travels better in the glass than the bottle, and the best versions are worth seeking out at the table rather than the supermarket.

Locally, a glass of cold Moscatel is a reasonable way to start any meal. Spanish rosé – and the Valencia region produces good ones – is a natural companion to lunch by the water. The fine dining restaurants carry serious wine lists; BonAmb’s is particularly well constructed, with excellent regional and national coverage. Let the sommelier guide you. They know things you do not, and they enjoy telling you.

For something non-alcoholic but locally meaningful, horchata de chufa is a Valencian staple worth trying – though it appears less frequently in Xàbia than in Valencia itself. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, from fruit grown in groves you can see from the road, is the morning argument for never leaving.

Food Markets and Provisions

The covered market in Xàbia’s old town is the place to start any serious understanding of the local larder. The fish stalls reflect what came in that morning. The produce stalls offer tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and citrus of the kind that remind you what those things are supposed to taste like. Visit on a weekday morning. Bring a bag.

For those staying in a villa – particularly those with access to a private kitchen or a private chef – the market is the obvious starting point for provisioning. A chef who knows the market and the local suppliers can construct menus of real quality from what is available, and the rhythm of market-to-table cooking suits Xàbia’s pace of life very naturally. This is, incidentally, one of the more compelling arguments for a villa over a hotel: the ability to eat on your own terrace, at your own pace, with exactly what you wanted from the market that morning.

Reservation Tips and Practical Advice

BonAmb operates with tasting menus only and books up quickly – particularly through July and August. Book as far in advance as your plans will allow. Their website takes direct reservations. Tula is similarly popular; a Michelin star in a small beach town concentrates demand considerably. Book both of these before you finalise your flights. This is not overcautious advice.

For El Trinquet and La Perla de Jávea, booking ahead remains sensible in high season, though the atmosphere is generally more flexible. Call or email directly where possible – Spanish restaurants often handle reservations more warmly by phone than through third-party platforms.

August is the peak of peaks. The entire European continent appears to have decided it wants to eat in Xàbia simultaneously. If you are visiting then, book everything. If you have the flexibility to visit in late May, June, early July, or September, you will find the same restaurants, the same food, and considerably less competition for tables. The sea is also perfectly warm in September, which is the best-kept secret on this entire coast.

Lunch in Spain runs from roughly 2pm to 4pm. Dinner rarely begins before 9pm in summer, and a 10pm booking is not late. This takes approximately 36 hours to adjust to and is worth every moment of recalibration.

Dress codes at BonAmb and Tula are smart-casual – no one will turn you away for shorts, but the rooms have a quiet elegance that most guests naturally match. At beach restaurants and casual spots, the coast has its own dress code: relaxed, comfortable, and ideally sandy.

For the full picture of what to do, see, and explore while you are here – beyond the restaurants – the Xàbia Travel Guide covers the cape in considerably more detail.

And if you are considering how best to base yourself in order to do all of this properly – a private pool, a terrace with a view, the option of a private chef who can bring the market to you – a luxury villa in Xàbia resolves that question rather elegantly. Some evenings, after BonAmb, the only reasonable next destination is somewhere very comfortable and very quiet. A villa with its own kitchen garden, a chef for the evenings you do not want to move, and a view of the Mediterranean at dusk. The food, it turns out, follows you home.