Barcelona is back and on brilliant form. After a few challenging years, investment has returned, and with it a wave of ambitious restaurant and hotel openings, a renewed sense of polish, and a buzzing, multicultural arts and social scene. This is a city rediscovering its swagger, rewarding to anyone who comes to explore it. Here is where to eat, drink, stay, and do right now in the city.
Eat
Fonda España
Images @romualdoabellan
In one of Barcelona’s most beautiful dining rooms, its restored gas-light chandeliers and original Domènech i Montaner walls now set against contemporary, bespoke furniture, Fonda España has fed the city since 1859. It reopened in May 2026 with Martín Berasategui, the most Michelin-decorated chef in Spain, overseeing a kitchen led by Edu Rodas, whose cooking is precise, sensitive and deeply connected to the produce. The menu stays true to the name: a fonda, uncomplicated dishes rooted in Catalan and Spanish culinary heritage. Begin with a Gilda, the green, lightly spicy Basque skewer, and the “Martín” Russian salad with white prawns, a Berasategui signature. Then the grilled artichokes with cured egg yolk and a vegetable sauce, and the kitchen’s iconic stuffed baby squid with pork jowl, its own ink and crisp rice. Then the cod kokotxas in pil-pil with bouchot mussels, or a whole salt-baked sea bass.
Solomillo
Solomillo is a Barcelona institution. It sits mezzanine-like on the first floor of the Alexandra Barcelona Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton, a long, low-lit room wrapped in olive-green walls giving off a fine dining finish to it. The concept is the work of chef-restaurateur Enrique Valentí, and it’s simple and delicious: you pick your beef breed, graded by depth of flavour from the soft, delicate Salers, through marbled Simmental and the more intense Frisian, up to the boldly flavoured Rubia Gallega, a long-lived Galician breed with well-matured meat. Then the weight, from a modest 125g, up to a sharing-sized 500g slab, then the cooking point, and finally the sauce: béarnaise, Café de París, Solomillo-style, blue cheese, black pepper, mustard, herb mojo or roasted jalapeño. Green garnishes, vegetables, and potatoes are extra.
Veraz at The Barcelona EDITION
At Veraz, Álvaro Salazar brings real precision to a focused five-course collaboration, running until October 2026 (read review here). His Mallorca restaurant VORO holds two Michelin stars and three Repsol Suns. Here, his signature dishes are prepared by the EDITION’s kitchen under Executive Chef Pedro Tassarolo. They honour the classics while reflecting the market produce of the day. Each of the five plates captures Salazar’s Andalusian and Mediterranean roots. Start with the Atún3 tuna opener and an ibérico ravioli with mushroom toffee. Next comes a shellfish salad dressed in palo cortado, then a red mullet caldereta, its stock carrying the fish’s prized little livers. This was a lunch of small, deeply layered plates, one of the most exciting and surprising menus of the season.
Volta Bar & Restaurant
In the heart of El Born, beneath the Porxos de Fontseré arches, Volta (read review here) borrows its name from those very vaults and from voltar, the Catalan notion of wandering at an easy pace. Nothing could suit this restaurant better. Meander gently through your evening, starting with a drink on the roof terrace, then come down for dinner. Executive Chef Andrea De Benedictis cooks a Western Mediterranean menu over open flame, drawing on his Italian background together with Barcelona’s produce, creating heartfelt dishes that are perfect for sharing. Savour the aperitivos at the bar, maybe a board of cheese and cured meats and the Volta parmigiana with aubergine cream, confit tomato mayo and pesto, then choose a handmade pasta before a slow-cooked Girona roast beef. The bar and restaurant are elegant and relaxed, a live DJ playing low, locals unwinding over drinks with their dachshunds tucked under the table. This is the best vibe in El Born.
Do
OD Sky Bar at Hotel España Ocean Drive
Barcelona is a city of rooftops, and the OD Sky Bar, crowning Hotel España Ocean Drive, is one not to miss. What makes it is the mix, a contemporary rooftop bar on top of a modernista landmark, old and new in stylish harmony. Open to the city and not only to hotel guests, it also offers shaded terraces to enjoy signature cocktails, including La Boqueria, a tropical mezcal-and-rum number named after the famous market nearby. The bartending team collaborates with the people behind some of Barcelona’s finest bars, while DJ sessions every Friday and Saturday, live music every Thursday through the summer, and a monthly All These Stories night of book talks, art, and music all add to the vibe.
Bastian Beach Barcelona
By the shores of the Mediterranean, near the landmark W hotel, one finds Bastian Beach, the city’s stylish beach club. Urban, lively and with a good restaurant, it makes for a full day destination. Come to eat, to dance and to take a dip. The menu includes a seasonal red tuna tartare, grilled octopus over parmentier, sea bass ceviche, and the bright, clever combination of watermelon, feta and Kalamata olives, as well as a paella of Palamós red prawns. The cocktails carry a playful theme, each named after a Greek god. Try the Poseidon, a peanut fat-washed bourbon with orange and bitters, alongside the gin-based Eolo and the champagne-lifted Afrodita. Spend the afternoon on the premium Balinese beds beside the private infinity pool, then stay on as it turns into a lively club scene after dark.
Sleep
Alexandra Barcelona Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton
Take a left turn halfway up Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona’s answer to the Champs-Élysées, and you’ll come to the Alexandra Barcelona Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton (read hotel review here), a luxurious boutique property tucked behind a discreet Eixample façade. A building of nineteenth-century pedigree, with mid-century styling and clean, contemporary interiors. The hotel has 115 rooms and suites, which are spread across eight floors, with a cluster of prized terraced junior suites complete with outdoor bathtubs. A hidden courtyard garden, terrace and pool sits at the back, while dining is centred around Enrique Valentí’s Solomillo steak house and at street level their charcuterie bar and delicatessen offer meats, cheeses and wines to enjoy bar side or on the street terrace.
Hotel España Ocean Drive
Few Barcelona hotels are works of art in themselves, but Hotel España Ocean Drive (read our hotel review here) is exactly that. Opened as the Fonda España in 1859 and transformed at the turn of the century by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, a father of Catalan modernisme, it sits a minute from La Rambla in the heart of the Raval. Now, with the Ibiza-born OD Hotels, its interiors have been carefully renovated by designer Lázaro Rosa-Violán, inspired by Art Nouveau and the modernista details of the property. The best of the 82 rooms open onto private terraces with skyline views. The soul of the place is comfort, art and music, with a library of the figures who shaped Barcelona and a vinyl corner of vintage records, fitting with the Liceu theatre as a neighbour. Breakfast is taken beneath Ramon Casas’ murals in the Sirens Lounge, and dinner is at Fonda España, where Martín Berasategui, the most Michelin-decorated chef in Spain, guides honest Catalan cooking. Evenings are savoured at the Dorita cocktail bar and at the rooftop OD Sky Bar, open to the whole city, not only to guests. True to what OD calls its ‘neighbourmood’, this is a hotel where locals and visitors share the best of Barcelona.
W Barcelona
Some hotels are landmarks in their own right, and Ricardo Bofill’s spinnaker-shaped tower, standing where the city gives way to the sea at the end of the Barceloneta, is one of Barcelona’s defining silhouettes. Freshly reborn in 2026 after a top-to-bottom refit, the W Barcelona is still the address for a certain kind of stay, its 473 rooms and suites, among them the signature WOW and EWOW suites, looking out over the city’s skyline, cruise ships and open sea. The facilities are a resort in themselves, three pools and five terraces, the WET Deck and Sun Deck with waterfront cabanas, direct access to the beach and the Salt Beach Club, and the AWAY Spa. Dining runs from Noxe, the 26th-floor Japanese restaurant and sky bar, to the Peruvian COYA and the grill at Fire. Be clear on what it is: a big, buzzing, high-energy hotel, louder than the boutique boltholes of the old town. But for beachfront presence and that unmistakable shape on the skyline, little else in the city competes.
