You eat well in Girona. The Catalan city is not only home to one of Spain’s most famous Michelin-starred restaurants. Girona has plenty of other great restaurants, breakfast and brunch cafés and delicatessens.
The guide was updated in February 2026, originally published in 2025.
Star food at the Roca brothers
The three-star Michelin restaurant El Cellar de Can Roca is the Rolls Royce of Girona’s restaurants. It has put Girona on the gourmet map, with people travelling from far and wide to dine at the restaurant, which was voted the best in the world in 2013.
El Cellar de Can Roca is located on the outskirts of Girona and is run by brothers Joan, Josep and Jordi Roca. Joan is in charge of the savoury cuisine, Jordi is the dessert king and Josep is the sommelier.
The brothers grew up smelling their parents’ food at their nearby restaurant, Can Roca, which has been serving classic Catalan dishes since 1967. The Roca brothers’ ambition is in a completely different league to their parents, and they have been praised for creating surprising food with a focus on sustainability.
The raw materials are local and the Roca brothers create simple dishes that combine molecular gastronomy.
The servers are works of art in their own right, and the taste is also top notch. The menu changes according to the season.
Reservations must be made online, and El Cellar de Can Roca accepts 2-12 guests per reservation. Reservations open 11 months in advance, and you’ll have to be quick to get a table, as they’re snapped up.
El Cellar de Can Roca, Carrer de Can Sunyer 48
Popular gourmet ice cream
If you can’t eat Michelin-starred food at El Cellar de Can Roca, you can enjoy gourmet ice cream at the king of desserts, Jordi Roca’s ice cream parlor, located in the Santa Clara pedestrian street in the city center.
Jordi Roca runs the ice cream parlor with his wife Alejandra Rivas, and people line up to try one of the delicious ice cream flavors.
The homemade ice cream with flavors like vanilla, chocolate, lemon and pecan is creatively decorated with caramelized nuts, Italian meringue, fruit candies or cotton candy, and the decorations are carefully matched to each ice cream variant.
The focus is on flavor combinations and an avant-garde expression. Ice cream is available in a cup, waffle or in a warm brioche.
Rocambolesc also has a small selection of creative ice cream sticks shaped like Girona’s landmark, the lion, a finger, a cell phone, a golden hand and a red nose.
The staff are happy to recommend toppings for the ice cream you choose, but you can also choose from Italian meringue, nut brittle, cherry candy and chocolate.
Rocambolesc, Carrer de Santa Clara 50
Taste the local breakfast favorite
Spaniards generally skip breakfast, and Girona is no exception. Here, however, many locals meet in the morning at the combined bakery and café, Casamoner, located in the heart of the city.
At Casamoner, Girona’s sweet breakfast favorite, xuixo, a sugar-dusted, deep-fried dough (similar to a Berlin pfannkuchen) with cream filling, is enjoyed with a good cup of coffee.
Xuixo was invented by a local pastry chef in the 19th century. At Casamoner, the xuixo is also available in chocolate, cream, raspberry and orange filled varieties, and some are decorated with icing or chocolate.
Casamoner has a modern interior and serves both traditional and modern baked goods. It has two other branches in the city where you can also enjoy a xuixo or the café’s many other homemade delights such as croissants, sandwiches, pies and cakes.
Casamoner, C/Santa Clara 45
Brunch at hip bike café
At the top of the Jewish quarter is the hippest brunch café in Girona, where locals and lycra-clad tourists alike meet for breakfast after their first cycling workout of the day. La Fabrica is owned by former professional cyclist Christian Meyer, who moved here from his native Germany, and his wife Amber.
The bike café is cosy with a large wooden table in the middle of the room, surrounded by smaller tables. The rough brick walls are decorated with bicycles, and the café also sells bicycle clothing and accessories.
The food is beautiful and colourfully decorated with herbs and flowers – and straight to Instagram. You choose your brunch from the menu, which includes bowls, chia bread, toast with espresso butter, avocado with red pepper and feta cheese or banana, bagels with egg or salmon, salads and pastries.
The coffee is homemade and good, and La Fabrica also has a good selection of teas and juices.
La Fabrica, Carrer de la Llebre 3
Powered by GetYourGuide
Cava and gourmet ham
In Girona, it’s always ham and cavati time, and every self-respecting bar has Spanish ham hocks hanging prominently in the room.
La Reserva Espai Gourmet, on the Hortes shopping street, specializes in Iberian hams and cheeses. The cellar is full of local wines, including sparkling cava.
La Reserva has a small café area and terrace where you can sit and taste hand-cut hams with a glass of cava or red wine. You can taste hams from different areas of the country and there is a good selection of luxury hams from acorn-fed blackfoot pigs. Try the melt-in-your-mouth DO Guijuelo from Salamanca, for example.
You can create your own ham tasting plate or choose one from the menu. The menu also includes a cheese plate with local goat, cow and sheep cheeses, pates and Iberian sausages. You can also taste local olive oil on freshly baked bread.
At La Reserva, you can also shop for some hand-cut slices of your favorite ham to take home in your suitcase.
La Reserva Espai Gourmet, C/Hortes 3
Lunch with local noodle paella
In Girona’s old historic quarter, close to the former Jewish quarter, the seafood restaurant L’arrós has a reputation as one of the best in Girona.
This makes it a good choice for lunch, which is the main meal in Spain. At the end wall of the simply decorated room with exposed brick walls, a large counter of fresh seafood abounds so you can choose what you want to be served.
I recommend trying their fideuà, which is Girona’s version of paella, but with the rice replaced by noodles. L’arrós serves fideuà in three varieties; classic, black and shrimp. The fideuà negra (black) is a rich and tasty dish with squid in its own ink (hence the name), seasoned with onions, garlic and peppers and is the most popular of the three.
L’arrós also has salads, seafood dishes, paella and seafood stews on the menu.
L’árrós de Girona, Carrer dels Ciutadans 20
A really good cup of coffee
Further down the river, in Girona’s old town, a gem of a coffee house hides beneath the vaults of a historic stone building. Espresso Mafia is owned by the couple behind the La Fabrica bike cafe, but here the focus is on the coffee. You’ll know it when the smell of freshly ground coffee hits your nostrils on the street.
A must for coffee lovers is to drop by the small coffee house, where the coffee is home roasted and tastes absolutely fantastic. The beans come from carefully selected producers and the coffee is so popular that it is also sold to many of the region’s cafés and restaurants.
In addition to great coffee, Espresso Mania has a selection of teas on the menu, and you can also get a slice of banana bread with chocolate or a waffle to go with your coffee.
You can buy coffee and coffee cups to take home from the small coffee shop.
Espresso Mafia, C / de la Cort Reial 5
Show this post on Instagram
Drinks at historic café
For a pre-dinner drink, stop by the historic Hotel Peninsular, located on one of Girona’s main shopping streets, close to the old town. The hotel houses the fashionable Savoy café and restaurant. Café Savoy opened in the 1930s and was a meeting place for the upper middle classes and famous Spanish actors and writers.
After being closed for many years, the café reopened in 2011 in an elegant and modernised version, which still respects the original design. Locals like to meet here for a pre-dinner drink, and there’s good local vermouth, wine and drinks on the menu.
Café Savoy, Carrer Nou 3
Rustic Catalan cuisine under the arches
Under the arches of the cosy Plaça del VI 7 is a unique restaurant named after the square.
The decor is a lovely mix of classic, rustic and retro. There are tiled floors, wooden bars and tables in the white rooms, and the menu is written in chalk on a blackboard. You can also sit outside on the terrace under the vaults with small tables.
The restaurant focuses on good, local ingredients, which the chef transforms into rustic Catalan dishes in modern versions. Entrees include grilled vegetables with cheese, branade with cod, salads and soups. Main courses include fish, seafood and stews, and desserts include classics such as crema catalana, chocolate cake and ice cream.
The owner is a sommelier, so Plaça del VI 7 naturally has a good and extensive wine list.
Restaurant Plaça del Vi 7, Plaça del Vi 7
A trip to cheese heaven
Cheese is more than just cheese. Behind a good cheese is a good story about the farmer and the producer, combined with a sense of quality. This is the philosophy of the cheese shop located on a charming cobbled street in Girona’s historic center.
The shop’s chilled counters are filled with artisanal cheeses that lure many locals in for a mid-day cheese snack. The small creative team behind the shop carefully selects cheeses from predominantly Catalan producers, but they also stock cheeses from the rest of Spain.
Artisan cheeses range from mild creamy to aged mold and dry cheeses and are made from cow, sheep and goat milk. There is also a small selection of goat yogurt. In the shop, you can pick out the cheeses you’d like to try and have them served on a small tasting plate for you to enjoy overlooking the cozy street.
You can also have your favorite cheeses wrapped so they’re easy to take home in your suitcase.
Cal Formatger, Carrer de la Cort Reial 12
Indulge your sweet tooth
After trudging up and down the stairs, narrow streets and blind alleys of Girona’s Jewish Quarter, Martina Sweet Cakes, located on the main street of the Jewish Quarter, is a great place to recharge your batteries.
As the name suggests, Martina is a paradise of homemade sweets, and there’s a rush for seats at the tables on the terrace in the afternoon. Martinas serves English and French style cakes. You can get different flavours of cupcakes like red velvet, carrot, oreos and nutella, macarons and croissants. Martina also serves generous portions of layer cakes and pies. The coffee is good and you can also get freshly squeezed juice.
The café also has a small selection of fresh fruit and salads.
Martina Sweet Cakes, Carrer de la Força 1,
Taste Girona on a guided tour
If you want to get a deeper insight into Girona’s eateries and food culture, I highly recommend joining a guided tour with Girona Food Tours. Their guides are really skilled and knowledgeable and it’s a great way to get to know Girona.
More travel tips for Girona and Catalonia
Read also the guide to 10 great experiences in Girona
Catalonia has plenty of other exciting experiences waiting for you. Hop on the Bullet Train and experience Catalonia’s most beautiful train journey. You can also take day trips to several Catalan cities.
Visit the beautiful coastal town of Cadaquez, home to Salvador Dalí, and be inspired by the graffiti artist’s insider guide to the coastal town of Blanes.
