Baga 1* Jaen, Spain
Just back from a trip to France/Germany/Spain that included 13 total stars but Baga is the one I most want to sing the praises of - Schwarzwaldstube and Hermanos Torres (both 3***) were each tremendous but Baga was 4x cheaper and really not far off of those two flavor- and creativity-wise, it was a really magical experience & it's way more than worth the hour's drive from Granada imo (and Jaen itself is lovely, not sure we saw a single other tourist in an hour walking around).
Tiny restaurant with a small chef's counter (highly recommended) and a few tables, basically a home kitchen setup with 4 or 5 staff somehow able to fit in there. Simple dishes with a few ingredients, no elaborate presentations, just a showcase of the chef's creativity and techniques.
17 total courses, six of which I gave an 11/10 along with these five I gave a 12/10 (which is my "one of the best things I ever ate" score):
- Pic 15, Beef tenderloin cooked in vanilla butter was one of the 3 or 4 best pieces of food I've ever had, the best thing I tasted on the whole trip. The eggplant was their pescatarian substitution and it too was stunning.
- Pic 12, Nori a la meuniere with brown butter and capers again an amazingly deep satisfying rich flavor and the lovely crispy salty capers for crunch
- Pic 14, Cod tripe (swim bladder) with sheep's butter sauce - this was basically a perfect pasta course to me, the texture of the swim bladder was not far off of pasta and the sauce was just wonderfully rich and savory, very Italian feeling with the focaccia
- Pic 9, Coconut ajo blanco with basil/pineapple granita and olive oil - the chef apparently hates this dish but keeps it on the menu because people like it so much, and, yeah, it's a flavor I haven't stopped thinking about, as a basil lover
- Pic 4, Beetroot with kelp butter, one of the heinously complex preparations involving roasting and drying and reconstituting with kelp, with the kelp butter sauce, marvelous combination and depth of flavor
- Pic 8, the 48hr pear with eel emulsion gets an honorable mention, one of their signatures and one of my wife's all time favorites
Even the courses that were merely very good were still super interesting and memorable - the lettuce with ice cream dessert, the hake fat mayonnaise with raw button mushrooms, the green pepper with pistachio emulsion.
$115 USD a person. Extreme outlier on my list as far as greatness-to-price goes.