Top Restaurants in Tarragona: Guide to Great Dining Spots august 21, 2024 – Posted in: Spain, Travel – Tags: Food, Holiday, Restaurants, Reviews, Spain, Tarragona, Vacation

Find the Best Restaurants in Tarragona

There are plenty of great restaurants in Tarragona – and here’s where you can find them! Tarragona is located about an hour’s drive south of Barcelona, on the northeastern coast of Spain. On the menu, this translates to Mediterranean cuisine with plenty of fish and seafood.

The city has many day-trippers coming from Barcelona. This means there are many restaurants to choose from for lunch. In the evening, when the last bus of day-trippers leaves the city, the atmosphere calms down, and the locals flock to the restaurants. We visited Tarragona in early April 2024 and didn’t find it difficult to get a table. However, we can’t say how it is to dine in Tarragona during the peak summer season.

Tarragona is a city where locals also enjoy dining out often, sometimes just for a quick snack. As a result, you’ll find restaurants and bars across the city offering pizza, tapas, and bocadillos. Tapas are small dishes, and a bocadillo is a sandwich. In Tarragona, you can expect to enjoy all the wonderful tapas you know from the rest of Spain. Ham, green padron peppers, and patatas bravas are prominent on the menu.

A Few Tips for Dining in Tarragona

Before we dive into restaurant recommendations, it’s important to note the meal times. Most breakfast cafés start opening around 8-9 AM. Lunch is typically served between 12 and 2 PM, and dinner starts around 8 PM and continues into the evening. This makes sense in a city that gets very hot in summer, with people staying in the shade from lunch until late afternoon.

Here’s our list of recommended restaurants in Tarragona based on our recent visit. Dining out is usually a big part of our vacations. We don’t always eat expensively but prefer local and regional ingredients. We also seek out great culinary experiences and love trying something new. So, you know what to expect when deciding whether to follow our recommendations.

3 Great Restaurants in Tarragona

We arrived late in the evening in Tarragona and had three nights in the city. The restaurants listed here are those we managed to visit. However, Tarragona is a city you’ll want to return to, so we promise this list will be updated later. Now, let’s get to the food!

A Tocar Ferro

For lunch, many restaurants are open, especially around major attractions, but many are expensive and may not be very good. We didn’t know for sure, as we ended up in the pedestrian street Carrer de Sant Augustí. Right by the small square, Plaça de Mossèn Cinto Verdaguer, there are plenty of small cafés and bars where locals hang out for coffee or a small beer and sandwich.

At A Tocar Ferro, we enjoyed the best freshly made tortilla and a sandwich with cheese and bacon. It wasn’t expensive, but it tasted really good! The staff doesn’t speak much English, but they are very friendly.

Bocois

On Rambla Nova, you’ll find many cafés, bars, and restaurants. The small side streets also offer numerous dining options, including both pizza and pasta as well as significant gastronomic experiences. Two places to check out next time are the Michelin restaurant El Terrat and Twins around the corner, which serves craft beers and tapas.

However, we passed by the tapas bar Bocois on Rambla Nova several times, and it stood out with its large menu and cozy atmosphere. We decided to try it – and we were not disappointed. We were there on a Wednesday evening when the city was otherwise quiet, but Bocois was busy!

At Bocois, you can enjoy tapas as you know them from Andalusia, as well as Llescas, which are Catalan pizza breads. The atmosphere is casual, and Bocois is a place where couples drop in for a small snack and a glass of red wine. If you’re visiting with a larger family, there will be something on the menu for everyone.

Restaurante Racó de l’abat

There isn’t much written about good restaurants in Tarragona, but we fortunately came across a longer article detailing the best dining spots in the city: 10 restaurantes donde comer en Tarragona muy bien. The article is in Spanish, but if you run it through Google Translate, a world of excellent restaurant recommendations opens up.

This led us to Restaurante Racó de l’abat, where we had perhaps the best culinary experience of the trip. The restaurant is designed like a medieval castle, and the host, Julio, personally visits each table to talk about the menu in his wonderfully chaotic way, making you feel like you’re in his living room. And the food… well, it’s just excellent! But again, there’s no menu to read, so you have to listen as Julio explains.

Julio’s wife is in the kitchen creating one traditional Catalan specialty after another. We chose boquerones (fried anchovies), mussels, fish, and pork for the main course, with homemade orange cake for dessert. It’s truly an experience, though perhaps not for everyone. On the other hand, if you have time, speak a bit of Spanish, and don’t mind a little chaos, you’ll have a fun evening!

Tarragona Food Market

And finally, when in Spain, you must visit a local food market. Mercado de Tarragona is located right on Rambla Nova, the main promenade. Inside the food market, there are several small food stalls where locals enjoy a little refreshment between shopping at the fruit and vegetable stalls, fishmongers, and cheese shops. In the basement, you’ll find a huge Mercadona supermarket.

On Plaça de Corsini, outside the food market, there are numerous square cafés, ice cream bars, and restaurants. If you walk down the side street Carrer de Lleida, you’ll find many tapas bars and a lively nightlife.

A Good Tip for Cocktails and Bars

If you’re looking for more action, head to Plaça de la Font. This central square is surrounded by beautiful buildings and is a popular meeting place for both locals and tourists.

A Good Tip for Ice Cream

If you prefer to relax in the sunshine during the day, there’s a small ice cream bar at the end of Rambla Nova and almost out on Balcó del Mediterrani, the beautiful viewpoint. Sirvent offers delicious homemade ice cream

More Tips for Your Vacation in Tarragona

How to Get to Tarragona?

It’s easy to travel from Barcelona to Tarragona. If you land at Barcelona Airport, you can take a direct bus down the coast. The bus company Plana runs about once an hour to Tarragona from both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. Be aware of which terminal you land in, as there is a 15-minute difference between departure times. It costs €17 and takes about an hour and a half. You can buy tickets on the bus with cash or on Omio. Click here to see the latest schedule!

If you are already in Barcelona, you can take the train from Passeig De Gràcia Station, which takes about an hour and fifteen minutes and costs €9.

Where to Stay in Tarragona?

If you really want to pamper yourself during your vacation in Tarragona, we highly recommend Hotel H10 Imperial Tarraco. We stayed here with a splendid view over the amphitheater and Torre de les Monges. The room is spacious and bright with several sections. Additionally, there is a huge bathroom with two sinks and so much closet space that there is easily room for all the belongings of a family of four.

Hotel H10 Imperial Tarraco also offered a truly excellent breakfast. The selection was exquisite, with just the right ham, fluffy pancakes, crispy croissants, sliced fruit, etc. From the restaurant, you can access one of the pools, and the other pool can be found on the top of the hotel at the rooftop bar.

Hotel H10 Imperial Tarraco is located at Balcó del Mediterrani, the city’s best viewpoint and right where everything happens. It is quite peaceful in the evenings, precisely because Tarragona has many day-trippers who only use the city during the day. Tarragona’s city center is small enough that you can stay at a slightly cheaper place and still be within walking distance of all the sights. See the wide selection of good hotels in Tarragona or conduct your own search right here:

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