Meanwhile, go to Spain and see for yourself. Open your palates to ultra-fresh fish and shellfish grilled simply, then topped with garlic and oil; to rustic slices of bread scrubbed with tomatoes and topped with anchovies; to tapas bar potatoes bathed in a spicy aioli.

Tour Barcelona's covered market and stop at the Bar Pinocho for a bracing espresso, a breakfast of thinly sliced, grilled artichokes, fresh-from-the-fishmonger's langoustines, sweet and surely decadent fried sweets.

The single caveat is to remember that the Spaniards will pay any price for fresh fish. So be sure to calculate the price before you order, particularly on shellfish priced by weight. Or, like certain impulsive customers, you'll end up paying up to $100 for a single rosy spider crab, or gentolla. But what a delicious, meaty, succulent spider crab it was.

No. 1: Ca l'Isidre, Les Flors 12, Barcelona; tel: 441-1139.

No. 2: Viridiana, Juan de Mena 14, Madrid, tel: 523-4478.

No. 3: El Olivo, 1 General Gallegos at corner of Juan Ramon Jimenez, Madrid, tel: 359-1535.

I think of this compact, bistro-sized restaurant - with its crisp white linens, and walls lined with artwork - as a classy cocoon for gourmands. Serious eaters come alone, tuck white napkins beneath their chins, and carefully savor every morsel, in silence.

Don't miss a chance to sample Isidre's fideos, tiny vermicelli pan-fried in oil, then baked in broth until a nutty flavor dominates. Served sizzling hot, with an aioli made only of garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, it's enough to console you for a week. Equally dramatic is Isidre's version of blistering baby eels as fine as spaghetti, fragrant with garlic and a hint of hot pepper. Close your eyes and search out the hint of the iodine tang of the sea. They're slightly crunchy, al dente, and served with a tiny wooden fork - better to swirl the baby eels, better not to burn the palate.

There are great renditions, too, of espardenyes (the rare tiny sea cucumbers) simply grilled; a soothing marriage of baby fava beans, fresh mint and cuttlefish; and daughter Nuria's extraordinary rum-marinated and sauteed apple dessert. Closed Sundays, holidays and August.

A la carte, 4,450 to 5,500 pesetas ($37 to $45), including service but not wine.

Viridiana, named after Luis Bumuel's 1961 film, is as one would expect, a place of passion and controversy. If you're in the mood for explosive, sometimes wild, but generally well-executed fare, then head straight to this popular Madrid restaurant run by Abraham Garc?a, a self-educated chef who also serves as a local film expert and critic.

Dining here is a bit like getting on a roller coaster and just letting the car rip, but what a ride! Often, it takes just that margin of zaniness for a chef to come up with such mercuric combinations as foie gras preserved with the powerfully nutty Pedro Ximenez sherry, served on a slice of brioche and imbibed with more dark, syrupy sherry; or toast topped with sorrel cream, green tomatoes and a duet of anchovies - one cured in vinegar, the other in salt. Delicious, both, and equally inventive.

Chef Garcia turns classic, with a dashing Andalusian combination of thinly sliced oranges, red onions, salt cod, oil and black olives; and then tames the palate with tiny cloudlets of sweet sea bass set on a cabbage leaf and adeptly cooked in a young cabernet wine sauce. The wine list is extensive and expertly conceived, covering every nook of the wine-making world.

Closed Sunday, holidays and August. A la carte, 3,550 to 5,250 pesetas, including service but not wine.

Theme restaurants generally end up looking like little more than a theme without a motive. But El Olivo - devoted to chef-owner Jean-Pierre Vandelle's passion for olive oil - uses the golden liquid as a serious foundation.

There's a rolling cart offering more than 70 Mediterranean olive oils and a bar stocked with more than 100 varieties of sherry. Like the cuisine of Abraham Garcia, I found Vandelle's food exciting, stimulating, and wildly creative. (His passions took him through 32 different tones of green, to get the right one for painting his restaurant.)

The best of many dishes sampled was his quartet of salt cod, which includes a smooth brandade; a version in which the fish was shredded and pan-fried with garlic; another bathed in a vibrant red sauce. He grills monkfish simply, a la plancha, and serves it with a rich black-olive sauce; creates a lively lobster salad set on a bed of warm pasta tossed with tarragon and chervil in a zesty vinaigrette; and scrambles eggs with bits of blood sausage, topped with just-fried shoestring potatoes. Don't miss his rich and ethereally textured chocolate marquesa, a blend of dark chocolate, cream, egg whites and sugar.

Closed Sunday, Monday and August. Menu at 3,750 pesetas. A la carte, 4,450 to 5,300 pesetas, including service but not wine.

No. 1: Zuberoa, Barrio Iturrioz (Iturriotz in Basque) 8, Oyarzun (Oiartzun), 13 kilometers east of San Sebastian; tel: (43) 49-12-28.

-No. 2: El Raco de Can Fabes, Sant Joan 6, San Celoni (Sant Celoni in Catalan), 50 kilometers north of Barcelona); tel: (3) 867-28-51.

No. 3: Arzak, Alto de Miracruz 21, San Sebastian; tel: (43) 27-84-65.

I can't imagine anyone being unhappy in this 600-year-old farmhouse, with its huge terrace overlooking a vast expanse of green, rolling hills, its stone walls, and its cool blue and white decor, attentively attended by ladies in crisp black and white. Of course, it's a family affair, with Hilakio Arbelaitz deftly handling the old coal-burning cast-iron stove, brother Jose Mari working his magic with the exquisite pastries, and brother Eusebio calmly directing the dining room.

The food here is from the heart, thoroughly Basque and brilliantly original. The meal could open with a perfect, single fresh anchovy, split open and marinated in fragrant extra-virgin olive oil and a touch of vinegar, then topped with a sparkling fresh salsa of cubed fresh tomatoes, celery and green pepper.

Chef Arbelaitz's idea of a salad might be fresh langoustines split and grilled to a caramelized edge, set upon a thin bed of wilted greens, then showered with minuscule cubes of sweetbreads and pig's feet, adding a warm, rich, substantial texture to it all. Other high points of a multicourse meal include a perfectly seared lobe of foie gras floating in a gentle broth, thickened slightly with fresh chick peas; extraordinarily robust and full-flavored breast of pigeon cooked rosy rare and paired with a lovely Italian-style risotto topped with a tiny chorizo sausage; and an unforgettable tarta de queso, a tangy-sweet cheese tart that lies somewhere in the stratosphere between cheesecake and quiche. With it all, sample the fine local white txomin etxaniz txakoli, and then a ruby Rioja.

Closed Sunday dinner, Monday, the first two weeks in January, last two weeks in October. 8,000-peseta ($56) tasting menu. A la carte, 4,200 to 6,200 pesetas, including service but not wine.

El Raco de Can Fabes, a half-hour's drive north of Barcelona, presents pleasing contrasts. The decor is old and rustic, the cuisine modern, slightly wacky, exceptionally energetic. Chef Santi Santamaria is dedicated to promoting the cooking of Spain, particularly his native Catalan cuisine.He is clearly not content with his Michelin two-star status, and is considered a serious contender for the top rating.

Come to this wood-beamed former tavern for a gastronomic feast, and don't be in a hurry. A tasting meal might begin with a pair of poached quail eggs set on a bed of espardenyes, a newly prized variety of sea cucumber that has long been eaten by Catalan fishermen, and a sweet, finely textured delicacy worth seeking out when dining in the region.

Santamaria's passion for wild mushrooms and black truffles is carried from kitchen to table, as with his nobly textured royal de trufas, a new rendition on a classic royale (a creamy poached custard-like mixture) incorporating rich truffle cream with a layer of sliced, fresh truffles. Chef Santamaria's chicken consomme - consome de gallina - made me want to run to the kitchen and begin preparing a kettle of consomme; while his pulpitos con habas, miniature crunchy baby octopus topped with tiny fresh fava beans, offered the epitome of pure, unadorned flavors and textures.

He has become famous for his ravioli de gambas - a carpaccio of the freshest baby shrimp molded upon a "filling" of pureed, sauteed wild mushrooms and showered with chives and parsley - though I have my doubts about its validity. The dish lacks a legitimate destination: Truly fresh shrimp have such a sweet flavor and a texture of pillowlike fluffiness when cooked, it seems wrong to denature them by serving them, basically, raw. Yet he redeems himself with a finely gamy becasse (woodcock), served with an original and refreshing salad of radish greens and baby turnips. His cellar holds some true, exciting treasures, including a sparkling cava (Recaredo Brut de Bruts), an extraordinary 1985 Cabernet Sauvignon (D.O. Costers del Segre), and a sweet closer, Moscatell Casta Diva from Alicante.

Closed Sunday dinner, Monday, first two weeks in February and in July. A la carte, 6,400 to 7,500 pesetas, including service but not wine.

The seaside town of San Sebastian has more to offer than true character, an innate charm and a fabulous market. It also has Juan Mari Arzak, whose Arzak is only the second restaurant in Spain to be honored with a third Michelin star. (The first was Madrid's Zalacain.)

Arzak is situated in an old house on the main road leading into town, and much like San Sebastian itself, the walls all but speak with a natural style of homegrown elegance. And while Arzak's food can certainly make one turn cartwheels, I found a very certain lack of enthusiasm in the kitchen, enough to keep it from the very top of the list. What's more, tables are too closely spaced, and service is lackluster.

That said, I'd go back any day to savor this carefully considered cuisine, marriages of flavors and ingredients that are neither totally obvious nor willfully reckless. The most earthshaking dish of a series of samplings was a combination of langoustines, woodsy, fresh morel mushrooms and just a spoonful of palate- awakening almond puree. The woods, the sea, the orchard never saw happier companions, as the dynamic identities of the mushroom and the crustacean held their own, and the haunting almond flavor flattered them even more.

I was equally enchanted by his expertly cooked merlu, or hake, served in two sauces: a leading-role sauce of black, cuttlefish ink and another a rich, intense, almost unctuous onion puree. It's food that appears simple on the palate, yet the results come about only through a laborious series of refinements. Arzak creates a wild pigeon salad, offering rosy pigeon breast on a bed of green and white pasta swirled with strips of zucchini, mushrooms and snips of ham; roasts the rare baby ortolan simple and neat; and offers an exquisite puff pastry layered with fresh berries and creams.

Closed Sunday dinner, Monday, the last two weeks in June, and November, 7,100-peseta tasting menu. A la carte, 6,000 to 7,400 pesetas, including service but not wine.