Restaurant in Cuenca, Spain
Book ahead. The tasting menus deliver.
A Michelin-starred (2024) contemporary restaurant inside one of Cuenca's hanging houses, with views directly over the Huécar river gorge. Chef Jesús Segura runs two tasting menus built around Cuenca's regional ingredients. Booking is hard — entry is via a code sent on reservation — and Monday and Tuesday are closed. Book well in advance.
Yes — but only if you plan ahead. Casas Colgadas Restaurante holds a Michelin star (2024), operates on a tightly controlled reservation system that sends you a door code on booking, and closes entirely on Mondays and Tuesdays. With service windows of just two hours at lunch (1:30–3:30 PM) and two hours at dinner (8:30–10:30 PM), and no Sunday evening service, the available slots are genuinely limited. This is a hard booking in a city that does not have many Michelin-starred options, and it is worth treating it as such. Book as far in advance as possible — do not expect walk-in availability.
The address is C. Canónigos, 16001 Cuenca, and the physical context matters here more than at most restaurants. The dining room occupies one of Cuenca's famous casas colgadas , the medieval hanging houses that project over the Huécar river gorge. From your seat, you look directly out across the gorge: exposed limestone cliffs, the slow bend of the river below, and the open Castilian sky above. The view is not a backdrop , it is the first thing you register when seated, and it remains in your sightline throughout the meal. The interior has been refitted in a meticulous contemporary style while keeping the original wooden beams intact, so there is a clear visual tension between the ancient structure and the pared-back modern room. The restaurant sits immediately beside the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, and if you have not visited the museum, arriving early enough to do so before your reservation makes sense given the shared aesthetic sensibility between the two spaces.
For food and travel enthusiasts seeking depth and context, the setting is part of the argument for booking. You are eating contemporary Spanish tasting-menu cooking inside a 15th-century structure cantilevered over a gorge. That combination is not available at many addresses in Spain, let alone in a mid-sized provincial city. For comparison, the broader category of destination Michelin dining in Spain , from El Celler de Can Roca in Girona to Arzak in San Sebastián , tends to be built around chef reputation and urban dining infrastructure. Casas Colgadas is built around a place, and that distinction drives a different kind of experience.
Chef Jesús Segura runs two tasting menus: Volver (the shorter, more concise option) and Cocinamos Cuenca (the full expression). The Cocinamos Cuenca menu is organised around the ingredients of the Cuenca region: trout, sardines, radish, walnuts, hare, Judía de la Virgen white beans, pigeon, and beetroot are among the documented courses. The approach is not nostalgic reconstruction , it is a contemporary reframing of what the Cuenca countryside and its culinary traditions actually produce. Every course is referenced to a local ingredient or technique, which gives the menu a coherence that generic tasting-menu formats often lack.
At the €€€ price tier, this sits above the casual dining options in Cuenca but well below the leading end of Spain's Michelin market. For context, three-Michelin-star operations like DiverXO in Madrid or Azurmendi in Larrabetzu operate at a significantly higher price point. At the one-star level, Casas Colgadas is priced where you would expect it, and the combination of setting, ingredient sourcing, and Michelin recognition makes the spend direct to justify for anyone making a dedicated trip to Cuenca.
The venue data does not include specific wine list details, so no claim can be made about the depth or character of the program. What the regional context suggests, however, is relevant: Cuenca sits within the Castilla-La Mancha wine region, one of the largest wine-producing areas in the world by volume, with appellations including Manchuela and Uclés producing serious red wines from Bobal and Tempranillo. A kitchen this focused on local ingredient provenance would logically extend that thinking to the cellar, but without confirmed data, that remains contextual inference rather than verified fact. If wine pairing is a priority for your visit, contact the restaurant directly before booking to ask about the wine program scope , the entry-controlled booking system means you will have a confirmed reservation and direct communication channel in advance. For Spain's deepest wine-focused dining experiences, venues like Quique Dacosta in Dénia or Martin Berasategui in Lasarte-Oria have more publicly documented wine programs for comparison. Internationally, Jungsik in Seoul and César in New York City offer benchmarks for how contemporary tasting-menu formats handle wine program depth at a comparable tier.
If you are planning a full trip around this booking, see our full Cuenca hotels guide, our full Cuenca bars guide, our full Cuenca wineries guide, and our full Cuenca experiences guide. Cuenca is a UNESCO World Heritage city with a compact old town , a single overnight stay is enough to cover the key sites alongside your reservation here. For broader Spanish restaurant context, Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María and Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona are the most relevant Michelin comparisons for travellers building a Spain itinerary around serious restaurant bookings.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Booking Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Casas Colgadas Restaurante | Contemporary | €€€ | Hard |
| Olea Comedor | Modern Cuisine | € | Unknown |
| Casa de La Sirena | Contemporary | €€ | Unknown |
| Raff San Pedro | Traditional Cuisine | €€ | Unknown |
What to weigh when choosing between Casas Colgadas Restaurante and alternatives.
The reservation system is code-based, which signals a tightly managed operation with limited covers — making large group bookings difficult to confirm without direct contact. The format (tasting menus, intimate setting in a historic hanging house) suits pairs or small groups of four far better than parties of six or more. If group dining is your priority, the tasting menu structure at Casas Colgadas may not suit the pace a larger table requires.
Yes, at the €€€ price point, a Michelin-starred tasting menu anchored in local Cuenca ingredients — trout, hare, pigeon, Judía de la Virgen white beans — represents good value relative to comparable one-star experiences in larger Spanish cities. The Cocinamos Cuenca menu is the fuller expression; Volver is the shorter route if you want the kitchen's perspective without committing to the full sequence. Neither option is a casual lunch decision, so plan your visit around it.
Lunch runs 1:30–3:30 PM, dinner 8:30–10:30 PM, Wednesday through Saturday; Sunday is lunch only, Monday and Tuesday are closed. Lunch is the only option on Sundays, which makes it the default for weekend day-trippers. For the views of the Huécar gorge, a clear-day lunch has a practical advantage over an evening service. Dinner suits those already staying in Cuenca who want to pace the experience without a drive back.
Entry is controlled by a code sent at the time of booking — show up without a reservation and you will not get in. The address is C. Canónigos, 16001 Cuenca, adjacent to the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in the old city. Chef Jesús Segura's cooking is built around Cuenca's regional larder and wild herb traditions, so this is not a generic fine-dining stop: the menus reflect a specific place. Book, confirm your code, and arrive on time.
The venue data does not detail a specific dietary restriction policy. Given the tasting menu format and the kitchen's focus on a set roster of local ingredients — including fish, game, and legumes — restrictions that require significant menu restructuring are worth raising directly at the point of booking. The concise, ingredient-led format means substitutions may be limited compared to à la carte restaurants.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
