YERBAxabia

A Different Kind of Coastal Cooking

Arrive at Avenida de Lepanto on the edge of Xàbia's port district and the surrounding scene tells you exactly what the town's restaurant trade is built on: salt-crusted fish, rice cooked over open flame, and menus designed to satisfy a tourist trade that arrives expecting the flavours of the Mediterranean coast without complication. That context matters, because YERBAxabia occupies a genuinely distinct position within it. The restaurant operates as a fully plant-based kitchen in a region where that category barely registers as a dining option, let alone a fine-dining one.

The Costa Blanca corridor, running south from Valencia toward Alicante, has produced some of Spain's more adventurous cooking in recent years. Names like BonAmb, located in Xàbia itself and working at the highest level of modern Spanish cuisine, and further afield, the decades-long ambition of El Celler de Can Roca in Girona or the seafood-focused boundary-pushing at Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María, have established that Spanish kitchens can work at the frontier of contemporary cuisine. YERBAxabia is doing something different again: applying that same commitment to discipline and sourcing to an entirely plant-based framework, in a resort town where the default remains grilled sea bass and paella.

The Sourcing Logic Behind Pure Plant Cuisine

The We're Smart Movement, which awards YERBAxabia 4 Radishes, functions as the plant-based world's closest equivalent to a serious culinary credentialing body. The Radish rating system evaluates kitchens specifically on how they source, treat, and refine vegetables and plant ingredients, with 4 Radishes representing a high tier of recognition within that framework. For context, very few restaurants operating in tourist-heavy coastal Spain receive this level of acknowledgment from We're Smart.

What that rating signals, in practical terms, is a kitchen paying close attention to where its ingredients come from and what happens to them before the plate. The Valencia and Alicante regions carry genuine agricultural depth: mountain vegetables from the inland sierras, citrus from the Valencian plain, locally pressed oils, and a horn of plenty from market gardens that have supplied these towns for centuries. A kitchen committed to 100% plant-based cooking in this geography has access to outstanding raw material. The discipline is in knowing how to use it without falling back on the international playbook of substitution-led plant cooking, where the goal is to replicate meat-based dishes rather than find what vegetables can do on their own terms.

That distinction separates serious plant-forward kitchens from restaurants that merely omit animal products. Internationally, the shift has been tracked through a handful of reference points: the tasting menus at Azurmendi in Larrabetzu, which integrates hyper-local Basque ingredients into technically demanding formats, or the kind of sourcing rigour visible at Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona. YERBAxabia operates at a different scale and price point, but its positioning within the We're Smart ecosystem places it in a peer conversation about ingredient integrity rather than novelty.

Where Xàbia's Dining Scene Sits

Xàbia's restaurant offer runs a recognizable range. At the entry level, Volta i Volta and La Perla de Jávea provide Mediterranean standards at accessible prices. Tula and Tosca occupy the mid-range Mediterranean tier, reliable and well-regarded locally. BonAmb represents the town's fine-dining ceiling, with the kind of creative modern Spanish cuisine that draws destination diners from beyond the region.

YERBAxabia cuts across that hierarchy by operating in a category most of those venues don't touch. It is not competing with the fish restaurants on seafood quality or with BonAmb on modern technique for its own sake. It is making the case that plant ingredients, sourced with care and treated with precision, constitute their own complete cuisine. In a town whose visitors largely arrive with the Mediterranean coastal diet in mind, that is a specific and deliberate choice of position.

For those looking to understand Xàbia's full dining range, the EP Club Xàbia restaurants guide maps the town's options across styles and price points. The Xàbia hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide round out the broader picture for visitors planning time in the area.

Chef Background and the Return to Xàbia

Chef-owner Walter Marskamp built his reputation in Amsterdam, where he was an early mover in fully plant-based fine dining and an active participant in the We're Smart Movement before relocating to the Costa Blanca. His return to Xàbia, and the reopening of YERBAxabia, was noted by We're Smart directly in their 4 Radish recognition, framing it as the restoration of a serious plant-based option to a region that had been without one. That framing is itself telling: it confirms both the scarcity of this kind of cooking on the Costa Blanca and the level at which Marskamp's kitchen operates within the We're Smart assessment framework.

The broader plant-based fine dining conversation has grown considerably, with kitchens across Europe and North America repositioning vegetables from garnish to protagonist. Venues like DiverXO in Madrid or Arzak in San Sebastián represent the Spanish fine dining mainstream, which remains largely omnivorous. YERBAxabia and kitchens like it occupy a smaller, more defined niche. Whether that niche grows in coastal Spain over the next decade will depend partly on whether diners begin to expect plant-forward options at the serious end of restaurant culture, and partly on whether chefs with the technical preparation to deliver it choose to set up in regions like this one.

Planning Your Visit

YERBAxabia is located at Avenida de Lepanto 2 in the port area of Xàbia (Javea), the address where the restaurant has re-established itself following Marskamp's return to the town. Given the 4 Radish recognition and the relative scarcity of plant-based fine dining across the Costa Blanca, demand from visitors specifically seeking this kind of cooking is likely to outpace walk-in availability during the summer season, when Xàbia's tourist population peaks. Booking ahead is advisable. For those exploring Spain's wider restaurant scene, the ambitions visible at Le Bernardin in New York City or Emeril's in New Orleans illustrate how ingredient-led precision translates across very different culinary traditions. At YERBAxabia, the logic is local, the sourcing is plant-exclusive, and the credential is specific.