Pepe Vieira

Some restaurant-driven hotels play it safe with their rooms, perhaps unwilling to assume that fans of forward-thinking gastronomy are similarly fans of forward-thinking hospitality. Others, like Galicia’s Pepe Vieira Restaurant & Hotel, wager that as long as they’ve got you thoroughly hooked at the dinner table, you’ll be willing to trust their vision for what the overnight experience should look like. The setting is a relatively secluded one, surrounded by forest in Galicia’s coastal countryside. Its rooms make much of this immersion in nature — each one is a freestanding modern cube with a vast picture window, drawing the eye from the sober minimalist-luxe interiors to the tranquil scenes outside. They’re called “galpones,” or sheds, which is an intentional understatement — in their sheer physical comfort they’re yet more proof that visual minimalism and maximal luxury can easily go hand in hand. Meanwhile the main attraction, as ever, is the cooking of chef Pepe Vieira, the eponymous chef whose restaurant has been awarded two MICHELIN stars for culinary excellence. The dining room is visually open to the landscape, just as the rooms are, and the experience is similarly impossible to forget.