Eating in Asturias: Casa Marcial, Narbasu and Monte
Three restaurants for a few days of eating in Asturias: the Manzano family's Casa Marcial and Narbasu, twenty minutes apart, and Xune Andrade's Monte, an hour west in the mountains of Lena.
Asturian cooking starts with a handful of products: fabes, the large white beans of fabada; blue cheeses such as Cabrales, ripened in caves in the Picos de Europa; cider; and fish and seafood from the Cantabrian coast. Three restaurants show how differently kitchens work with them today. Two belong to the Manzano family and lie about twenty minutes apart, near Arriondas and in Cereceda. The third, Monte, is an hour's drive west, in a village in the municipality of Lena. Only Narbasu has rooms, which makes it the natural base for the first two.
Casa Marcial: the family home
La Salgar is a hamlet near Arriondas. Nacho Manzano's parents ran a village tavern in the family's house there, and in 1993 he and his sisters opened Casa Marcial in the same building. Since the 2025 guide, Michelin has given it three stars.
Casa Marcial serves tasting menus built on Asturian produce from the coast to the Picos de Europa, and part of the vegetables come from the family's garden at Narbasu. For a sense of where the cooking starts, look at the two family dishes Esther and Nacho Manzano also sell for delivery: fabes, and arroz con pitu de caleya, rice with free-range Asturian chicken.
Narbasu: garden, mill and 23 rooms
Casa Marcial has no rooms. Twenty minutes away, Sandra, Esther and Nacho Manzano run Narbasu in the Palacio de Rubianes at Cereceda, a country house below the Sueve massif with views towards the Picos de Europa. It has 23 rooms in three categories, Standard, Especial and Junior Suite, and breakfast is included.
Esther and Nacho cook here and call their approach “cocina de paisaje”, cooking from the landscape. A garden of around a hectare on the estate grows vegetables for Narbasu, Casa Marcial and the family's other restaurants, and a restored mill grinds the maize for the tortos, small maize flatbreads that open the meal. Alongside the à la carte menu there are two set menus, the Menú Tradicional and the Menú Narbasu, mixing family classics such as fabada with what local farmers and producers bring in. Michelin gave the restaurant a Green Star in its 2023 guide, an award it began phasing out in 2026; the 2026 Guía Repsol gives it one Sol.
The restaurant is open Thursday to Sunday, with lunch only on Sunday, so plan your nights around it: one evening at Narbasu, one at Casa Marcial.
Monte: five tables in San Feliz
Monte is an hour's drive west of the Manzanos, in San Feliz, a mountain village in Lena in the old coal-mining valleys south of Oviedo. Xune Andrade opened it in 2019 with five tables, and Michelin gives it one star.
The cooking is unlike the Manzanos': much of it is done over charcoal, with ferments and produce from the surrounding mountains rather than the coast. Delia Melgarejo's wine list concentrates on small growers and mountain wines. With so few tables, book well ahead.
Practical
The nearest airport is Asturias, near Avilés. You need a car: Casa Marcial and Narbasu are twenty minutes apart, Monte about an hour from both. Book Casa Marcial and Monte well ahead and check each restaurant's opening days before you fix your nights.
