Restaurant in Tossa de Mar, Spain
The meal that justifies the day trip.
La Cuina de Can Simón is Tossa de Mar's most credentialed contemporary restaurant, holding a Michelin Plate for 2024 and 2025 with a 4.7 Google rating from 523 reviews. The kitchen focuses on daily fish auction sourcing and locally rooted Mediterranean cooking at €€€. Book one to two weeks ahead in summer; lunch is the format that makes most sense here.
If you are spending a day in Tossa de Mar and want one meal that justifies the trip beyond the beach, La Cuina de Can Simón is the booking to make. This is the right restaurant for couples on a slow coastal day, for anyone who has already eaten well in the region and wants something with genuine culinary intent behind it, and for visitors who have been to the medieval town before and are ready to move past the waterfront trattorias. At €€€ pricing, it sits in a range where you are paying for real craft, not tourist convenience, and the Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025 confirms there is something worth paying for here.
La Cuina de Can Simón sits at the foot of the town walls on Carrer del Portal, 24 — which is to say, it is embedded in the old part of Tossa de Mar rather than positioned on the seafront strip. The atmosphere that comes with that address is quieter and more considered than you will find closer to the coves. This is not a loud room. It reads as a place where the energy comes from conversation and the food arriving at the table, not from ambient noise or a packed bar area. If you have previously eaten at noisier spots along the Costa Brava and found the buzz distracting, this is a material improvement. For a second visit, the relative calm is one of the things worth coming back for.
Given the context , a medieval beach town, a menu built around daily fish market sourcing, siblings running a family-rooted kitchen , lunch at La Cuina de Can Simón has a strong case. The rhythm of a coastal market town peaks in the middle of the day, and the fish and seafood that anchor the menu are sourced from the daily auction, meaning the morning's catch is at its leading by early afternoon. A long lunch here, followed by a walk through the old town or a swim at one of Tossa's coves, is a better-structured day than an evening visit that requires you to still be in town after dark.
That said, dinner has its own logic. The town quietens considerably by evening, the walls are lit, and the room at Can Simón takes on a different character once the daytime foot traffic drops away. If you are staying in or near Tossa de Mar rather than day-tripping, dinner is worth the trade-off , you get a more settled service pace and the full attention of a room that is not mid-afternoon busy. For day-trippers: lunch. For those staying on the Costa Brava: dinner is a reasonable alternative, and you should still book ahead either way.
The menu is built around fish and seafood sourced daily from the local fish auction, with rice dishes and select meat cuts from the inland Costa Brava playing a supporting role. The sibling team behind the kitchen , Lores, Josep María and Xavier , frame their cooking through a family lineage of artists and fishermen, which is reflected in a focus on natural, artisanal and locally sourced ingredients. Mediterranean restraint runs through the approach: the emphasis is on clean, recognisable flavours rather than elaborate technique for its own sake. The Michelin Plate designation, awarded for two consecutive years, is a signal that the food has consistency and a point of view without yet reaching starred complexity. For a return visitor, the logical move is to lean into whatever is freshest from the auction that day rather than arriving with a fixed dish in mind.
La Cuina de Can Simón is not in a major city, and Tossa de Mar draws concentrated summer tourism between June and September. Book at least one to two weeks in advance during peak season; outside of that window, a few days' notice is likely sufficient, though the restaurant's consistency means demand is steady. The booking difficulty is rated easy relative to Spain's top-end restaurants, but that should not be read as walk-in friendly , particularly if you have a specific lunch slot in mind. Check availability early if your travel dates are fixed. Specific hours and direct booking contacts are not confirmed in our data, so verify current times and reservation methods directly with the restaurant before your trip. The address is Carrer del Portal, 24, in the old town, which means arriving by car will require parking outside the walled area and walking in.
For broader context on what else to do while you are in the area, see our full Tossa de Mar restaurants guide, our full Tossa de Mar hotels guide, our full Tossa de Mar bars guide, our full Tossa de Mar wineries guide, and our full Tossa de Mar experiences guide.
Within Spain's broader contemporary restaurant field, La Cuina de Can Simón occupies a different tier from the country's flagship fine dining addresses. El Celler de Can Roca in Girona is the regional point of comparison most visitors raise , it is within the same province, operates at €€€€ and three Michelin Stars, and requires booking months in advance. If your priority is the most technically ambitious meal in Catalonia, Can Roca is the answer, but it is a fundamentally different exercise in ambition and price. Can Simón is the right call when you want genuine quality in a smaller, quieter setting without the booking marathon or the full fine-dining commitment.
For seafood-led creativity at the highest level, Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María operates at the extreme end , three stars, a marine-focused tasting menu, and a price point well above Can Simón. Quique Dacosta in Dénia and Azurmendi in Larrabetzu sit in similar territory: serious, destination-level restaurants where the tasting menu is the entire point of the visit. Can Simón is not competing with any of them on that axis. What it offers instead is a properly credentialed, locally rooted contemporary meal in a medieval coastal town , something none of those €€€€ destinations provide.
If you are building a Spain itinerary around food, Can Simón works as a well-judged regional stop rather than a headline booking. Pair it with a longer drive to Arzak in San Sebastián or Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona if you want a higher-complexity meal on the same trip. Within Tossa de Mar itself, it is the clearest answer for anyone who wants to eat well rather than conveniently.
| Venue | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|
| La Cuina de Can Simón | €€€ | — |
| Quique Dacosta | €€€€ | — |
| El Celler de Can Roca | €€€€ | — |
| Arzak | €€€€ | — |
| Azurmendi | €€€€ | — |
| Aponiente | €€€€ | — |
Side-by-side comparison to help you decide where to book.
Book at least one to two weeks ahead in shoulder season, and four or more weeks ahead between June and September — Tossa de Mar draws concentrated summer tourism and the restaurant's Michelin Plate recognition keeps demand high. Walking in without a reservation during peak summer is a gamble not worth taking if La Cuina de Can Simón is the reason you came to town.
This is a contemporary gastronomic restaurant at €€€ pricing in a medieval Catalan beach town, so neat, relaxed dressing fits the context — think smart casual without beach attire. There is no indication from the venue of a formal dress code, so linen shirts and clean footwear are well-suited.
Bar seating is not documented in the available venue information for La Cuina de Can Simón. Given its positioning as a gastronomic restaurant at €€€, table reservations are the standard format — check the venue's official channels via the address at Carrer del Portal, 24 to confirm seating options before you arrive.
At €€€ pricing, the value case rests on the kitchen's sourcing discipline: fish and seafood from the local daily auction, a sibling team with clear family roots in the fishing and arts traditions of Tossa de Mar, and two consecutive Michelin Plate recognitions (2024 and 2025). That combination is harder to find on the Costa Brava than the price point suggests. If contemporary seafood in an atmospheric medieval setting is what you are after, yes — it is worth it.
The kitchen's strengths are rooted in daily fish market sourcing, which is the format a tasting menu showcases most effectively — giving the siblings latitude to work with what arrived that morning rather than locking you into a single dish. If you are making a specific trip to Tossa de Mar and have the time, the tasting menu is the better way to experience the range of the kitchen versus ordering à la carte. Specific pricing and menu formats are not confirmed in available venue data, so verify with the restaurant directly.
Tossa de Mar is a small town and La Cuina de Can Simón is its most documented gastronomic option at this level. For higher-register contemporary Spanish cuisine in the broader region, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona (roughly 80 km north) operates at a different tier entirely. Within the Costa Brava, options at Michelin Plate level with comparable local sourcing are limited — if the kitchen is closed or fully booked, Tossa's fish-focused casual restaurants along the seafront are the practical fallback.
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