ARZAK Restaurant

No.8 Best Restaurant in the world for 2012

Presentations - Restaurants

Juan Mari Arzak and Elena Arzak Espina's plates look fantastic: striking, colourful and imaginative, yet for the most part unfussy.

Father and daughter, collaborate in a salmon-hued building with old school awnings that has been in the family for four generations, and started its life as a humble tavern back in 1897.

Now here's a restaurant which claims to be the only authentikos eaterie in England.

It became a restaurant in 1967, and steadily gained acclaim with Juan Mari’s modern Basque cuisine, achieving its 3rd Michelin star a good twenty odd years later.

Decades on, Arzak is still thriving - it still proudly boasts all three stars and claimed the title of 8th best restaurant in the world this year.

The pair run the kitchen as equals and are a major presence in the dining room. Like the food, it pulls off the neat trick of balancing tradition and innovation, with warm, familiar service.