Casa Marcelo

Casa Marcelo is thirty paces from the cathedral's north entrance, in a white-fronted corner building that gives away almost nothing from the street. Inside is a long communal table seating about twenty-four, a visible kitchen, and one of the most original European fusion projects outside London. Chef Marcelo Tejedor has run the room in some form for most of his career, and in its current shape — one Michelin star, a surprise-menu format, no à la carte — it is the most exciting dinner in Galicia.

The cooking is Galician produce through a Japanese–Peruvian–Mexican lens, and the surprise menu is absolute. You choose four or eight courses; you do not choose what they are. A nigiri of Galician scallop with a yuzu kosho; a tiradito of Atlantic sea bass with leche de tigre made from Galician shellfish stock; a taco of king crab with avocado and a single dash of habanero; a tempura of razor clams with a coriander purée. Each arrives at the pass and travels directly to your seat with a sentence of explanation from the chef.

The wine list is unexpectedly deep for the room's size — serious Galician whites (Albariño, Godello) run the spine, with a confident Jerez programme, a Mencía row from the Ribeira Sacra, and a growing natural-wine section. Pairings are the right move; the sommelier runs the programme in parallel with the chef's improvisation and the two are genuinely collaborative.

The communal table is the point. You sit beside strangers, the chef and the sommelier talk to the whole room, and by the fourth course the group has typically fused into a single dinner party. This is not for guests who want a private corner — for everyone else, it is the single most original fine-dining experience in northern Spain, and the dinner most pilgrims remember the longest.

Casa Marcelo is a client-impressing dinner for a guest who already knows San Sebastián and Madrid and wants to see something new. The Galician–Asian frame is genuinely unusual, the surprise format removes all the negotiation from the evening, and the communal table creates a memorable scene. It is not the room for a private business negotiation — for that, see A Tafona below — but for a memorable dinner that the guest will talk about on the flight home, this is the table.