About Az-Zait
Az-Zait takes its name from the Arabic word for olive juice — the source of aceite, the modern Spanish word that fills every kitchen in Andalusia — and the restaurant wears this etymology as a statement of intent. Chef Antonio Conejero has built a restaurant that refuses to pretend Seville's 800 years of Moorish history did not happen in the kitchen, and the result is one of the city's most distinctive and coherent dining experiences.
The setting is a baroque manor house interior that would look more at home in Marrakech's medina than in a modern restaurant guide. Gold chairs. Murals of Roman gods that coexist with Arabesque geometric patterns. A dining room that evokes a parallel history in which the Reconquista never concluded. The effect should be incongruous; instead it is exactly right. The Michelin Guide recognized this with a Bib Gourmand, and the city's most discerning diners recognized it long before Michelin arrived.
The menu is built around tasting formats of five, six, or seven courses, each named after an olive estate whose oil figures in the cooking. Conejero's technical expertise is considerable — trained and refined over years in serious kitchens — but it is always deployed in service of flavor rather than impression. A dish of gazpacho might arrive in a form you do not immediately recognize, but the flavor is deeper, more concentrated, more specifically itself than any version you have eaten at a terrace café. Everything here has been thought about.
The cheese and digestif trolleys, a traditional French formality that feels oddly appropriate in this context, extend the meal's pleasures into the late evening. Service is impeccable in the old sense — attentive, knowledgeable, present without intruding. This is a restaurant to return to across seasons and discover how the same philosophical foundations produce different expressions as the Andalusian year turns.
Why it excels for First Dates
Az-Zait offers something that very few restaurants can provide: a setting that generates conversation on its own. The baroque interior, the name's etymology, the philosophical premise of a kitchen that takes 800 years of history seriously — there is enough to discuss before the first course arrives. The tasting menu eliminates ordering anxiety and replaces it with shared discovery. The food is sophisticated without being intimidating. And at around €60–80 per person with wine, it costs less than it suggests, which never hurts.