What to Eat in Asturias: A Food Guide

In Asturias you order fabada, cachopo, cheeses like Cabrales, poured cider, and arroz con leche. Cider-house fabada runs €15-17, and Casa Gerardo, in Prendes, is the fine-dining reference. Cachopos, cheeses, and cider are best tried at casas de comidas, cheese shops, and chigres rather than tourist menus.

Asturias doesn't eat in a hurry. This is a land of slow fire, where a plate of fabes carries the memory of winter, and a culín of cider — the small measure poured and drunk in one go — goes down in one swallow while the waiter pours from up high without even looking at the glass. This guide isn't selling scenery: it explains what to order, where to find it, and why it tastes the way it does.

Fabada: the dish that defines a land

There's no Asturian cooking without fabada. Buttery Fabes de la Granja beans, the compango — smoked chorizo, morcilla, and lacón — and a long, low-heat cook that allows no shortcuts. The secret isn't the recipe, which almost everyone knows, but the resting: a good fabada gets better the next day, once the broth settles and the beans turn out whole on the outside and creamy within.

For the fine-dining version, the reference is Casa Gerardo (Prendes): open since 1882, five generations at the helm, a Michelin star, and three Repsol Guide Suns, with a fabada that's become doctrine. For the cider-house version, in April 2026 the cider house Río Astur, in Gijón, was named Best Fabada in the World at the Villaviciosa contest — among 23 finalists, ahead of El Rincón de Adi (Oviedo). At a cider house it runs €15-17; order it as your only course and consider dinner done.

Cachopo: excess with a name

Two breaded veal cutlets wrapped around ham and melted cheese, roughly the size of a plate and meant for sharing, even if nobody actually does. It's a relatively young icon, but it's become the region's great popular ambassador. The key is the raw material: Ternera Asturiana IGP beef and a cheese that melts nicely without drowning out the meat.

Oviedo holds most of the big names — in El Comercio's 2025 Yantar ranking, six of the top ten are in the city, with La Corte de Pelayo leading the pack — but the national title was won elsewhere: Casa Repinaldo, in Candás, won the Concurso Nacional de cachopo con Ternera Asturiana IGP, with jamón from Tineo, cheese from Oscos, and walnuts. Order it for two, and wash it down with cider; it's not a diet dish, and it doesn't pretend to be.

Cheeses: from the cave to the table

Asturias has one of the highest concentrations of cheeses anywhere in the world, with four Protected Designations of Origin. The king is Cabrales, a raw-milk blue cheese aged for several months in natural caves in the Picos de Europa, with extremely high humidity and constant cold. Its intensity isn't for everyone, and that's precisely its charm. At the August 2025 contest in Arenas de Cabrales, the winning wheel sold at auction for €37,000 — the most expensive cheese ever sold at auction — though the Cabrales that lands on a cheeseboard costs what a good cheese costs, not what a jewel does.

Alongside it, Gamonéu — especially Gamonéu del Puertu, made only in summer in the high pastures, lightly smoked, with a discreet blue rind — and Afuega'l Pitu, a cow's-milk cheese, either creamy or spiced with paprika, whose contest is held every January in La Foz de Morcín. Buy them at local markets and cheese shops, ask about the ageing, and serve them on a board rather than cooked: these cheeses call for bread and cider, not fusion cooking.

Cider and the art of pouring

In Asturias, cider isn't just poured, it's poured from up high — arm raised, bottle up, glass down — so the stream breaks against the glass and aerates the culete, the two-finger measure drunk in one go, always leaving behind a culín, a small last splash, to rinse the glass. It's as much a social ritual as it is a drink, and it lives in the chigre, the traditional cider house, where a bottle costs little and gets shared by default.

July and August are the heart of cider season. The Festival de la Sidra de Nava, whose main days fall around 10 to 12 July 2026, crowns the best pourers at the Concurso Internacional de Escanciadores. And the Fiesta de la Sidra Natural de Gijón, in late August, culminates on Poniente beach with the simultaneous pouring record: in 2024, 9,796 people poured at once. All you need to bring is the glass.

Desserts: sweetness by slow fire

The great Asturian finale is arroz con leche, though not just any version: here it's cooked very slowly until the rice releases all its starch and turns creamy, scented with cinnamon and lemon, and finished with a crust of sugar burnt to order — the famous requemado that cracks at the first touch of the spoon. A good one needs nothing else.

In traditional pastry-making it's joined by casadielles — fried turnovers filled with ground walnut, sugar, and anise, essential at Carnival — and frixuelos, very thin crêpes eaten dusted with sugar. Look for them in village eateries and bakeries rather than tourist menus; the best arroz con leche is usually found where it's advertised the least.

How to eat in Asturias, with judgement

Eat according to the season and the place: fabada and cave-aged cheeses in the inland valleys, fish and cider on the coast, Gamonéu del Puertu only in summer. Be wary of menus that offer everything, and trust the ones that offer little and repeat it every day. A chigre full of Asturians at midday says more than any star rating.

Book ahead at the well-known names — Casa Gerardo and its peers fill up — but leave room for the walk-in cider house, the village food contest, and the neighbourhood bakery. And pace your appetite: portions here belong to a working land. Better to order a little less, share, and come back another day with a fresh appetite.