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The Basque Country, divided between Spain and France, is one of the world’s great gastronomic destinations. In the Spanish Basque Country, the pretty Belle Époque resort near the French border called Donostia–San Sebastián alone has three three-Michelin-starred restaurants in its constellation of starred tables. There’s also superb eating in Bilbao, home to the Guggenheim museum, and in many smaller towns and villages in the region. The French Basque Country is similarly epicurean, with a dense concentration of outstanding tables and some of France’s most interesting young chefs.

Sissinou 5, avenue du Maréchal-Foch, Biarritz (33) 5-59-22-51-50

In Biarritz, the grande dame of the French Basque coast, Sissinou was one of the highlights of a week I recently spent eating in the area. Young chef Michel Cassou-Debat’s cooking is fresh and produce driven, as evidenced by two excellent dishes: an impeccable roast lamb with baby onions, and sautéed rougets with baby squid and zucchini. The dining room is stylish without being fussy: think sea-green walls, a hammered-steel bar and prune-velvet-upholstered banquettes.

Rosewood, Grand Hotel 43, boulevard Thiers, Saint-Jean-de-Luz (33) 5-59-26-35-36 www.luzgrandhotel.fr

Just down the coast from Biarritz in pretty Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Rosewood, the dining room of the Grand Hotel, won a deserved Michelin star this year. With its sea views and air of an Edwardian men’s club, it’s a lovely place to dine on chef Nicolas Masse’s flawlessly grilled rougets with guacamole pigeon roasted with peaches and fresh almonds and other contemporary French dishes. At lunch, the restaurant serves a different menu from the rotisserie in the open kitchen, and the roast chicken with asparagus is a standout.

Hegia Chemin de Curutchea, Hasparren (33) 5-59-29-67-86 www.hegia.com

I found it a pleasure to rediscover the first-rate cuisine of Arnaud Daguin—formerly at Les Platanes, in Biarritz—at Hegia, the charming guesthouse he’s created with his wife, Véronique. Dinner is the only meal served; those who aren’t guests of the hotel are only admitted by special request when the dining room is not full. Daguin prepares a single meal nightly and serves it table d’hôte style.

Les Pyrénées 19, place du Général Charles de Gaulle, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (33) 5-59-37-01-01 www.hotel-les-pyrenees.com

If you’re a fan of good old-fashioned French bourgeois fare and like well-dressed, well-drilled, slightly formal restaurants, you’ll enjoy Les Pyrénées, in the beautiful little town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Gracious owner Firmin Arrambide deserves a movie career, so perfectly does he incarnate the gracious, omniscient maître d’hôtel, and such dishes as grilled wild salmon with béarnaise sauce, and lamb sweetbreads with peppers and porcini mushrooms, are delicious. The wine list has a fine selection of bottles from the nearby Domaine de Brana, the best winemaker in the French Basque Country.

Donostia–San Sebastián, also called San Sebastián, is a city in which you’ll want to eat both lunch and dinner if you’re serious about sampling the extraordinary amount of culinary talent concentrated here.

Mugaritz, Otzazulueta Caserío Basseria 20 Aldura Aldea, Errentería (34) 943-522-455 www.mugaritz.com

Mugaritz, on a hillside outside town, is currently the insider’s foodie address, but chef Luis Aduriz’s minimalist, even slightly monastic cooking style isn’t for everyone. Still, when he’s good, he’s brilliant: witness his Idiazábal cheese gnocchi in ham bouillon and his crab in goat’s-milk butter seasoned with cloves.

Martin Berasategui 4 Calle Loidi, Lasarte (34) 943-366-471 www.martinberasategui.com

Martin Berasategui’s three-Michelin-starred table is also located outside the city, in an elegantly decorated contemporary house in Lasarte. Berasategui’s style displays the tutelage of French chefs Michel Guerard and Didier Oudil, with whom he worked at the beginning of his career. If Berasategui’s ingredients are proudly Basque, there’s a certain Gallic elegance to dishes such as his signature caramelized mille-feuille of smoked eel and foie gras and sea bass sauced with juiced green beans and garnished with baby peas.

Zuberoa Garbuna (34) 943-492-679 www.zuberoa.com

Though Akelare and Arzak, both three-starred tables, get all the attention and are better than ever, I also love Zuberoa, which is sort of the dark horse of the San Sebastián culinary scene. This two-Michelin-starred restaurant occupies a handsome 600-year-old stone house in the countryside near Oiartzun, about forty minutes from the city. Chef Hilario Arbelaiz does dazzling riffs on traditional Basque dishes, including foie gras in a broth of chickpeas, cabbage and bread crumbs; a sublime risotto of foie gras and truffles in roast-pigeon sauce; poached cod in a gelatinous sauce of its own skin, cocoa and curry; and warm almond cake with lemon ice cream.

Etxebarri 1 Plaza San Juan, Axpe (34) 94-658-3042

It’s well worth making a detour into the countryside between San Sebastián and Bilbao, for the thrill of discovering chef Victor Arguinzoniz’s extraordinary avant-garde barbecuing at his restaurant, Etxebarri, in the tiny, pretty village of Axpe. Arguinzoniz is Spain’s wizard of smoke, since almost everything he prepares is grilled or griddled over a variety of charcoals he makes himself. A former dairy-company executive, he abandoned himself to his passion for cooking with fire, a tradition in the Spanish Basque Country, several years ago, and Etxebarri has since become one of the hottest insider’s addresses in Spain. You’ll know why when you sample Arguinzoniz’s grilled octopus with peas and asparagus, griddled wild mushrooms and grilled squid and onions in a sauce of squid ink. His smoked-milk ice cream, the grand finale of a meal here, is one of the most original dishes in contemporary Spanish cuisine.

Azurmendi Legina Auzoa, Larrabetzu (34) 94-455-8866 www.azurmendi.biz

Azurmendi, the most talked-about restaurant in Bilbao these days, isn’t found in the shadows of the gleaming titanium-clad Guggenheim museum but instead in a rather dull commercial district outside town. Don’t let this, or the somewhat institutional dining room, put you off, however, since chef Eneko Atxa is very much the standard-bearer of the new generation of Basque chefs. Atxa’s short menu changes regularly, but such dishes as his oysters with caviar in seawater mousse and griddled scallops topped with flying-fish roe and bathed in squid bouillon are spectacular. And the dessert not to miss is his heavenly “textures of chocolate” trilogy of ice cream, soft cake and airy mousse.