Restaurant in Logroño, Spain
Michelin-starred fusion. Book weeks ahead.
Ajonegro holds a Michelin star (2024) and delivers a genuinely rare fusion of Mexican and La Rioja cooking in central Logroño. At €€€, it is the city's most ambitious table, best experienced via the evening tasting menu. Book four to six weeks out minimum — availability is tight and the narrow weekly service windows mean slots disappear fast.
Ajonegro earned its Michelin star in 2024, and if you visit Logroño without booking a table here, you are making a planning error. This is the city's most compelling case for destination dining: a fusion of Mexican and La Rioja cooking, executed by two chefs trained at the three-Michelin-starred ABaC under Jordi Cruz, operating out of a compact address on Calle Hermanos Moroy. At €€€ pricing, it sits at a level where you are paying for genuine technical ambition, not just a pleasant meal. Book early. Tables fill weeks out.
If you are coming for the first time, the format shapes everything. Lunch runs a tight 90-minute window (1:45 PM to 3:15 PM) across Wednesday through Sunday. Dinner operates Wednesday to Saturday, 8:45 PM to 10:15 PM, with no Sunday evening service. The evening format gives you the full tasting menu, which is the format worth travelling for. At lunch, the à la carte is available and gives you more control over what lands on the table, which is useful if you want to test specific dishes before committing to the longer format on a return visit.
Visually, the room is precise and considered. This is not a rustic tapas space or a wine-country barn. Expect clean plating, controlled portion sizing, and presentation that takes its cues from high-end European kitchens. The dishes that have drawn Michelin's attention include the Mexican red prawn cocktail, crispy pork cheek tacos, venison with pink Mexican mole, and the pastel de Elote, a sweetcorn-inspired dessert cake. These dishes move between Mexican reference points and La Rioja ingredients, with spice levels calibrated for European palates rather than Oaxacan ones. If you arrive expecting the heat of a Mexico City taqueria, recalibrate. The flavours are layered and precise, not aggressive.
Ajonegro's menus lean on seasonal ingredients, and this matters practically for when you visit. The kitchen's Mexican-Riojan crossover works especially well in autumn and winter, when La Rioja's game, root vegetables, and cold-weather produce align naturally with deeper mole profiles and richer preparations. The venison with pink Mexican mole is the clearest expression of this: a dish that makes more sense on a cold November evening than on a warm spring afternoon. If you are visiting Logroño during harvest season, the intersection of the wine region's most active period and Ajonegro's seasonal sourcing is the strongest argument for timing your visit to coincide with autumn.
Spring and summer visits will see lighter preparations come forward, with the prawn cocktail and tacos-format dishes taking prominence. The à la carte gives you the flexibility to track what is current without locking into the tasting menu's full arc. For a first visit in warmer months, this is actually a sensible approach: order three or four dishes à la carte to understand the kitchen's register before committing to the full menu format on a return trip.
The restaurant has been open only a few years, having formed when the two chefs, Mariana Sánchez from Cuernavaca and Gonzalo Baquedano from Logroño itself, left ABaC and brought their respective culinary heritages back to his home city. The Michelin star arrived relatively quickly, which is a meaningful signal in a city where fine dining competes against some of Spain's most serious wine-country restaurant culture. For context, Logroño sits within a region that attracts diners heading to the Marqués de Riscal estate and other Rioja institutions. Ajonegro is the city's answer to the question of what happens when you apply that ambition to something other than traditional Spanish cooking.
Booking here is hard. The Michelin star arrival in 2024 tightened availability significantly. There is no online booking link or phone number in the public record at the time of writing, so your leading approach is to contact the restaurant directly through their address on Calle Hermanos Moroy, 1 in central Logroño, or check for third-party availability via local concierge services. Plan for a minimum of three to four weeks' notice, more if you are targeting a Saturday dinner slot. Monday and Tuesday are closed entirely.
Dress code is not formally stated, but the Michelin context and €€€ pricing suggest smart casual at minimum. The room's visual register is polished, and arriving dressed for a neighbourhood bar will feel misaligned with the experience around you.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Booking Difficulty | Leading For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ajonegro | Mexican-Riojan Fusion | €€€ | Hard (Michelin 1★) | Tasting menu, creative cooking, destination dining |
| Ikaro | Creative | €€€ | Moderate | Creative Spanish, comparable price tier |
| Kiro Sushi | Sushi, Japanese | €€€€ | Hard | Omakase-format splurge, very different register |
| Marqués de Riscal Restaurant | Modern Spanish | €€€€ | Moderate | Wine estate experience, higher spend |
| La Cocina de Ramón | Traditional Cuisine | €€ | Easy | Accessible, traditional Riojan cooking |
| Juan Carlos Ferrando | Contemporary | €€ | Easy | Contemporary cooking at a lower price point |
Within Logroño's fine dining tier, Ajonegro and Ikaro are the two most closely matched options at €€€. Both pursue creative cooking with a clear point of view, and both will appeal to diners who want more than a conventional Riojan meal. Ajonegro's advantage is the specificity of its concept: the Mexican-Riojan crossover is genuinely unusual in Spain's fine dining circuit, and the Michelin recognition gives you an external quality signal that Ikaro currently lacks. If you can only book one, Ajonegro is the stronger choice for a first serious meal in the city.
For higher-budget options, Kiro Sushi at €€€€ and Marqués de Riscal Restaurant at €€€€ serve different purposes. Kiro Sushi is a Japanese-format experience with no thematic connection to Logroño, worth considering if sushi is your priority but not a natural companion to a Rioja wine trip. Marqués de Riscal makes more sense as an estate visit combining dining with the wine-country context, and the higher price reflects the full experience rather than just the food alone.
If your budget is tighter or you want a no-pressure evening, La Cocina de Ramón and Juan Carlos Ferrando both operate at €€ and are significantly easier to book. They deliver a more traditional or contemporary Spanish register without the fusion ambition. These are the right choice if you want a relaxed dinner rather than a structured tasting experience. Ajonegro is a different ask: it requires planning, commitment, and an appetite for the format. For diners willing to put that in, it is currently the most interesting table in the city.
Ajonegro is operating in territory that a small number of Spanish restaurants have explored seriously. DiverXO in Madrid at three Michelin stars is the most prominent example of fusion cooking in Spain pushing into genuinely extreme territory. Arzak in San Sebastián and Azurmendi in Larrabetzu approach creative cooking from Basque foundations. Ajonegro's Mexican-Riojan register has no direct equivalent in Spain, which is what makes it worth tracking as the kitchen matures. For international comparisons in the fusion category, Arkestra in Istanbul and Couleurs de Shimatani in La Ciotat offer different expressions of what serious cross-cultural cooking looks like at this price tier.
For more on where to eat, drink, and stay in the region, see our full Logroño restaurants guide, our full Logroño hotels guide, our full Logroño bars guide, our full Logroño wineries guide, and our full Logroño experiences guide.
| Venue | Awards | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ajonegro | A restaurant that will delight guests both for its gourmet cuisine and the love story that is behind it. The dreams and sense of excitement evident within its walls developed relatively recently when the two chefs at the helm met while working with celebrated chef Jordi Cruz at the three-Michelin-starred ABaC. Mariana Sánchez, originally from Cuernavaca (Mexico), and Gonzalo Baquedano, who hails from Logroño, showcase their skills on an à la carte and a tasting menu (in the evening, the latter is combined with another shorter menu option) that showcase the fusion between Mexican and La Rioja cuisine with an emphasis on seasonal ingredients. The elegant and consistent cooking here subtly plays with spicy flavours that are adapted to European palates through variations on classic Mexican tacos. Standout dishes include the Mexican red prawn cocktail, the crispy pork cheek tacos, the venison with pink Mexican mole, and the sweetcorn-inspired “pastel de Elote” cake.; A restaurant that will delight guests both for its gourmet cuisine and the love story that is behind it. The dreams and sense of excitement evident within its walls developed relatively recently when the two chefs at the helm met while working with celebrated chef Jordi Cruz at the three-Michelin-starred ABaC. Mariana Sánchez, originally from Cuernavaca (Mexico), and Gonzalo Baquedano, who hails from Logroño, showcase their skills on an à la carte and a tasting menu (in the evening, the latter is combined with another shorter menu option) that showcase the fusion between Mexican and La Rioja cuisine with an emphasis on seasonal ingredients. The elegant and consistent cooking here subtly plays with spicy flavours that are adapted to European palates through variations on classic Mexican tacos. Standout dishes include the Mexican red prawn cocktail, the crispy pork cheek tacos, the venison with pink Mexican mole, and the sweetcorn-inspired “pastel de Elote” cake.; Michelin 1 Star (2024) | €€€ | — |
| Kiro Sushi | Michelin 1 Star | €€€€ | — |
| Marques de Riscal Restaurant | €€€€ | — | |
| Ikaro | Michelin 1 Star | €€€ | — |
| La Cocina de Ramón | €€ | — | |
| Juan Carlos Ferrando | €€ | — |
Comparing your options in Logroño for this tier.
Dinner gives you more format flexibility: the tasting menu runs in the evening alongside a shorter menu option, so you can calibrate spend and commitment. Lunch is a single tight window (1:45 PM to 3:15 PM) with a narrower offering. If you want the full picture of what this Michelin-starred kitchen can do, book dinner. Lunch works if your schedule demands it or you prefer à la carte.
The venue sits at €€€ with a Michelin star, so treat it as a polished dinner-out occasion: neat, put-together clothing without needing a jacket or tie. The cooking has a creative, cross-cultural personality rather than a stiff formal one, and the dress expectations likely follow that tone. Overly casual attire would feel out of place.
Book at least three to four weeks out, and longer if you are targeting a Friday or Saturday evening. The Michelin star arrived in 2024 and tightened availability considerably. No phone number or online booking link is publicly listed, so your first step is tracking down direct contact details via search or the venue's social presence before a seat appears.
The kitchen fuses Mexican and La Rioja cooking, trained under Jordi Cruz at three-Michelin-starred ABaC, so this is not standard Spanish fine dining. The hours are short and fixed: lunch ends at 3:15 PM, dinner ends at 10:15 PM, and the restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday. Come with a reservation, choose dinner for the tasting menu option, and expect spice levels adapted to European palates rather than full Mexican heat.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
