Restaurante Mesón Casas Colgadas

Mesón Casas Colgadas holds one of the most dramatic dining addresses in all of Spain. The restaurant occupies part of the city's iconic Casas Colgadas — the 15th-century Hanging Houses cantilevered over the Huécar gorge — in Cuenca's UNESCO World Heritage old city. Dining here means sitting beside windows of a building that literally projects over a sheer limestone ravine, with views directly down to the river below. The setting alone draws visitors from across Spain, yet the kitchen more than sustains its end with serious Manchegan and Cuencan cooking.

The menu centres on dishes native to the province of Cuenca. Tiznao de bacalao — salt cod slow-cooked with pepper, garlic and tomato until it becomes a darkly flavoured, deeply satisfying stew — is the restaurant's most celebrated preparation. Ajo arriero, another regional classic, combines flaked salt cod with garlic, egg and olive oil into a rich, almost spreadable dish served with bread and olives. Cuencan interpretations of morteruelo, pisto and lamb stew fill the menu alongside more contemporary plates. Resoli, the local liqueur of coffee, orange peel, cinnamon and aguardiente, appears as a digestif and occasionally as a dessert flavouring.

The wine list focuses on Castile-La Mancha appellations with good coverage of the Manchuela denomination, whose vineyards grow in the hills between Cuenca and Albacete. Service is formal and attentive, befitting the prestige of the location. Reservations are essential; the coveted window tables overlooking the gorge should be requested explicitly and booked well in advance, as demand for them consistently exceeds supply. The restaurant shares its building complex with the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, making a visit here easily paired with a gallery tour in the same afternoon.

The Casas Colgadas date to the 15th century and were originally private mansions before becoming civic buildings; their projection over the cliff is a feat of medieval engineering that still astonishes. Eating inside them — with the stone floor, low ceilings and that extraordinary void visible through the windows — makes for a meal unlike any other in Castile-La Mancha.