It is home to some of Spain's top ski resorts and most "mesmerically beautiful" scenery, but Huesca is little visited by non-Spaniards.
However, two recent events are helping to put the province "on the map", said Paul Richardson in the Financial Times. One was the opening in 2023 of Canfranc Estación, a grand hotel in a long-abandoned 1920s railway station high in the mountains. The other was the award, late last year, of Michelin stars to three of Huesca's newest restaurants, all located in villages with fewer than 200 inhabitants.
The news of this gastronomic flowering has drawn a growing number of "well-to-do" visitors from Madrid and elsewhere, and is attracting attention further afield too. From Zaragoza, the capital of the wider region of Aragón, I drove for 80 minutes to Sardas, in the forested foothills of the Pyrenees. Home now to only 35 "mostly elderly" residents, this once-thriving village is typical of what is known as la España vaciada ("emptied Spain").
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However, a group of stone barns on its fringes is now the restaurant La Era de los Nogales. Its chef, Toño Rodriguez, told me that he has found various advantages to being in a small village, including the ability to build close relationships with local producers. He creates 18-course menus of "highly worked" dishes reflecting "the terroir of northern Huesca" ("the mushrooms, the truffles, the fine butter and Somontano olive oils, the trout from the Cinca river"), but despite such sophistication, the restaurant's dining room feels relaxed and lively.
Next came Restaurante Ansils, in the high-mountain village of Anciles, where siblings Iris and Bruno Jordán offer refined takes on traditional recipes learnt from their grandmother, such as cabbage-and-potato trinxat.
My final stop was Casa Arcas, in nearby Villanova, site of some equally "serious" cooking (I enjoyed the artichokes and pigeon eggs in a "crunchy" ham-and-potato cream) by the Basque chef Ainhoa Lozano.
A five-course menu here costs €46, a price typical of the rates at these rural restaurants.
