14 Best Lebanese & Middle Eastern Restaurants in Barcelona

La Balabusta is the one we'd send a first-timer to. Chef Ronit Stern grew up in Haifa and cooks Israeli and Middle Eastern food shaped by Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Maghrebi traditions, with vegetables doing as much work as the meat and fish. The name comes from a Yiddish term for a capable, commanding matriarch, which tells you about the generous, home-style spirit of the place. It's a small, semi-industrial room in the Eixample, sister to Auto Rosellón across the street. Order the eggplant fritters with feta, green apple and date honey, the cauliflower shawarma with tahini and pomegranate molasses, and the schnitzel with coleslaw and pickles. Book ahead, the room is tiny.

If you want the classic Lebanese table done well, Karakala in Gràcia is the one that comes up again and again. It's a modern room built around traditional cooking, mezze, charcoal grills and slow stews, set up so you hand the ordering over and let plates arrive in waves. Come with a group and order across the table: hummus, falafel, baba ganoush, fattoush, then move into the grills and stews. The chich tauk is lemon-marinated chicken skewered and grilled over charcoal, the shawarma Karakala leans on a house red-wine marinade, and the Fuego de Baal is a beef stew with chilli, prunes and raisins over rice. There's a weekend set menu and a weekday menu del dia if you want it easy, and the average bill on TheFork sits around €19. Vegetarians eat well here.

Al Jaima de Abou Khalil has been serving Lebanese food in Barcelona since 1983, which makes it the city's pioneering Lebanese kitchen. Owner Miguel Katib grew up in Lebanon's Shatila refugee camp before bringing his mother's cooking to Barcelona, and he still sources ingredients personally at Mercabarna. The menu covers the full range: cold and hot mezze, grandmother's recipes like bamiah (okra stew) and stuffed courgette, charcoal grills, rice and biryanis, and proper desserts. If you can't decide, the Mazza tasting spreads do the work for you, and there are full vegetarian and vegan sections. The hummus Abou Khalil comes topped with spiced lamb, the ouzi is slow-cooked lamb with spiced rice and nuts, and you finish with knafe, warm cheese pastry with pistachio. Meats are halal here.

Masaya is the Lebanese table you bring a crowd to. It sits in La Dreta de l'Eixample and does the mezze-led spread you graze across rather than ordering one plate each, with an average spend around €20 a head. It's set up for groups and families, which is why it draws the crowds it does. Order the arayes, grilled bread filled with seasoned meat, the hummus bilahme topped with meat, and the sfiha (open meat pies) to start, then move into the shawarmas and the kafta, grilled minced-meat skewers. It's not the most refined room on this list, but it's reliable, generous and easy to fill a long table with, which is exactly what you want from a Lebanese meal.

Bērytī is the critics' Lebanese-comfort-food pick, a laid-back bistro up in El Camp d'en Grassot, on the edge of Gràcia. The cooking is homestyle, the kind of generous Lebanese food meant for passing around the table, with modern accents in the room and a terrace when the weather plays along. There's wine, beer, cocktails and coffee alongside the food, and vegetarian options on the menu. The weekend brunch is a soft spot of ours, with plates like zucchini omelet, eggplant mujasakh, chickpea fatte and potato kibbeh. It's less of a special-occasion room and more the neighbourhood Lebanese spot you'd want around the corner, which is its own kind of compliment.

Mazah is the one that keeps getting named for its hummus, and the list backs that up: this is a Lebanese kitchen on Gran Via in La Dreta de l'Eixample, led by Chef Amer, with a cold-mezze section built around hummus variations, hummus Beiruti, hummus bel lahme with minced meat, hummus pesto, even a beet version. Beyond the dips there's mohammara, mutabbel (smoked aubergine), labneh and shanklish (aged cheese), plus hot mezze like makanek (Lebanese sausage with pomegranate molasses) and ras asfour (stewed beef with pine nuts). The weekday menu ejecutivo at €19.90 is the easy lunch, and there are group menus if you're a table of four or more. Come for the dips, stay for the grills.

Silan adds the modern-Israeli angle alongside La Balabusta, a small Levantine kitchen in L'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample. The cooking is Israeli and Levantine, built on shared mezze, herbs, olive oil, legumes and grilled and slow-cooked dishes meant to land on the table together rather than as separate courses. Vegetables do a lot of the heavy lifting, and there are vegetarian options throughout, so it works whether or not everyone at the table eats meat. Spend lands around €20 to €30 a head. It's the kind of place to go when you want the Middle Eastern table done with a contemporary, vegetable-forward touch, in a part of the Eixample that's quietly become a good eating neighbourhood.

Askadinya is the Palestinian specialist on this list, a sleek spot in Vila de Gràcia with a leaf-covered courtyard that's one of the nicest places to eat outdoors in the neighbourhood. The kitchen works in the Middle Eastern register: meze, small shared plates you build a table around, grilled meats off the fire, and pastries to finish. Vegetarians are well looked after, since so much of the spread is vegetable, pulse and grain based. Average spend sits around €18 a head, which is gentle for what you get. Come for a slow lunch, a relaxed dinner, or a long table out in that courtyard when the weather's right. It's the only Palestinian kitchen on the list and worth seeking out for that alone.

Ugarit Bruniquer is the Syrian anchor, founded by Hani Sarkis and rooted in Syrian home cooking in La Vila de Gràcia. The carta is long and built for grazing: mezze spreads of hummus, mutabbal, mohamara and labne, tabbule and fattuch salads, warak inab and falafel, then shawarma, xix tawuk and kafta you can order as a tapa, a full plate or a combinado. The grilled meats off the brasa are the move if you're hungry, from lamb mechoui to the kafta done several ways. Vegetarians and vegans get whole sections of the menu to themselves, not an afterthought. Prices run from under €6 for a tapa up to around €25 for the big grills, so it scales from a light bite to a proper feast.

Rincón Persa is where to go for proper Iranian cooking, in Sant Antoni. The carta is a broad tour of Persian home cooking: starters like kashk o badenyún (fried eggplant with kashk, walnuts and mint oil) and mirza ghasemí (charred eggplant with tomato, garlic and egg), plus Persian bread baked fresh to order. From there it's the heart of the cuisine, polós (rice dishes) like zereshk poló with barberries and baghali poló with fava beans and dill, chelo kebabs including kubideh, barg, jujeh and the combination soltaní, and slow-cooked khoresh stews. Get the fesenjan, boneless chicken in a Persian pomegranate and walnut sauce, or the ghormeh sabzi with herbs and dried lime. It's a different rhythm from the Lebanese tables, built on rice and stews rather than mezze.

Aladdin is the pan-Arab option near the Sagrada Família, drawing on both Moroccan and Lebanese cooking in a Moorish-inspired room of tiled floors and carved wood dividers. It's a sit-down table built for the shared, mezze-style eating both traditions are known for, with falafel, hummus and salads, plus a long list of starters and fatayer (savoury pastries). Order the hummus, the mutabal, the aràyes de kafta (grilled bread with spiced minced meat) and a spread of fatayer to share. There's a full bar with wine, beer and cocktails, vegetarian options throughout, and spend lands around €20 to €30 a head. It carries the biggest review base of any spot in this pool, which is its own signal that the room rarely disappoints.

Ali Ocakbaşı brings the ocakbasi, Turkey's open charcoal grill, to the Eixample Esquerra, and it's the Turkish pick on this list precisely because it's a sit-down restaurant rather than a dürüm window. The cooking centres on the grill: skewered and grilled meats, kebabs, and the warm-and-cold meze that frame a Turkish meal, muhammara, ezme, cig köfte and the rest. It's built for long, group-friendly dinners, with wine and beer, a dedicated vegan menu, and a terrace for warmer nights. The average bill on TheFork sits around €38, which puts it at the upper end here, but you're paying for charcoal-grilled meat done properly. Come hungry and order meze first, then let the grill do the rest.

Sarab by Les Mil i Una Nits is the second Syrian table on the list, near the Sagrada Família. The cooking is Levantine and built around meze and grilled meats, with the olive oil, bread, herbs and spice that run through the region's food. Start with the dips, hummus, mutabal and baba ganuge, and the pistachio kebbe, then move to the brasa for kafta and shish tawuk, or the mashawi mixed grill for two. There's a Syrian-specialities section with fatteh and both meat and vegan versions of kebbe, and the baklawa and the chocolate cup with kataifi and pistachio close things out. Vegetarian dishes are a core part of the table here, not a token gesture. A relaxed, generous spot for a shared Syrian dinner.

Albé is the most ambitious kitchen on the list after La Balabusta, a Lebanese-Catalan gastrobar in l'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample founded by Joey Attieh and headed by executive chef Nancy Miguel. The idea is seasonal Catalan produce given a genuine Lebanese touch, built on a Slow Food philosophy and sharing plates. Michelin inspectors have singled out the maitake (Grifola frondosa) mushrooms and the trout from the Catalan Pyrenees served with avocado labneh and trout roe. The carte runs from a smoked labneh and falafel done their way up to slow-cooked Montseny lamb neck and Balfegó tuna, and there are two tasting menus at €62 and €74 if you want the full arc. It's the place to come when you want Lebanese flavours through a contemporary, produce-led lens.