Pepe Vieira – a hotel built around a two-starred table

On a wooded hillside above the Ría de Pontevedra, in the small Galician settlement of Raxó, Pepe Vieira is chef Xosé T. Cannas's life's work made into a place to stay. His restaurant has evolved from an ambitious local address into an international destination since it first opened its doors, and in April 2023 it grew a hotel beside it: fourteen freestanding glass cubes, known as galpones, scattered across a 12,500 square metre plot of native forest and framed views of the estuary. The MICHELIN Guide gives the hotel Two MICHELIN Keys, its mark of an exceptional stay, while the restaurant itself carries Two MICHELIN Stars and a Green Star for its approach to sustainability. Everything here answers to the kitchen first: there is no separate bar, no television, and barely a wall between the rooms and the pines outside. It is, as the chef puts it, 'the farthest cuisine in the world' turned into architecture.

01The house

Xosé T. Cannas – the chef everyone simply calls Pepe Vieira – opened his first restaurant in Sanxenxo in 2000, building what has evolved from an ambitious local restaurant into an international destination under his leadership. A founding member of the Galician chefs' collective Grupo Nove, he carries decades of international training from Canada, Scotland and France into his personal reading of Galician cuisine, a project deepened since 2016 by his collaboration with an anthropologist, which infuses each dish with cultural storytelling and has helped earn the restaurant its two MICHELIN Stars, alongside the coveted MICHELIN Green Star for sustainability.

The restaurant moved to its current hillside site on the Camiño da Serpe and took its second MICHELIN star in November 2022. The hotel came a few months later, in April 2023: a deliberately 'deconstructed' idea of a hotel, its fourteen rooms set on a 12,500 square metre estate wrapped in native woodland, each one a freestanding cube rather than part of a single building. Pepe Vieira became a member of Relais & Châteaux the same year.

02Rooms and suites

The fourteen galpones take their name from the small rural outbuildings of the Galician countryside, though the word undersells them: in their sheer physical comfort they are proof that visual minimalism and maximal luxury can sit comfortably side by side. Each is a sober, minimalist-luxe cube with a vast picture window pulling the eye from the interior out toward forest or sea.

Insider tip

Adults-only; no hotel bar, drinks served fireside; pool set apart in the woods; book the tasting menu ahead.

A Premium Room with Terrace runs to 30 square metres, with a private terrace, sitting area and mountain views, floor-to-ceiling glass, polished concrete and Japanese-inflected decor around a king-size bed and walk-in shower, plus minibar and eco bath products. The larger Deluxe Room with Terrace, at 36 square metres, looks over forest toward the sea beyond, pairing a glass-walled cube with a black bathroom, rainfall shower and a leather armchair for reading.

03Where to eat

The cuisine unfolds across three narrative tasting menus – Romasanta, O Señor de Andrade and A Santa Elección – each weaving Galician mythology into the plate: a langoustine cooked in seawater with tapioca pearls and Albariño wine-lees cream, or a caramelised onion built as a tribute to the plañideras, Galicia's traditional professional mourners.

Vegetables are harvested, when possible, straight from the hotel's own garden, with the kitchen relying on local fishermen and farmers for everything else – a position that made Pepe Vieira one of the first restaurants in Spain to be awarded a green MICHELIN star. Breakfast follows the same logic rather than convention: it is built as a five-step gastronomic experience, opening with juices made according to the season.

04The wine cellar

There is no dedicated bar at Pepe Vieira; instead guests gather in the 'lareira', a lounge named for its open fireplace, for a drink before or after dinner. The real draw is the cellar, an encyclopaedic collection of Galician bottles alongside European and international picks and the odd dusty vintage. The hotel sits in Rías Baixas, one of Galicia's five wine-producing areas and home to the elegant Albariño whites that anchor the list.

05Pool and grounds

A swimming pool sits apart from the rest of the property, set into its own clearing and ringed by native vegetation, so that even here the forest stays the main view. Around it, the estate's hillside paths and gardens do the work that a conventional hotel lobby might, linking the scattered galpones to the restaurant and its cellar.

06The neighbourhood

Raxó sits within the municipality of Poio, on the southern shore of the Ría de Pontevedra, a twelve-minute walk from Raxó Beach and within easy reach of the wider Rías Baixas coastline. Santiago de Compostela, with its cathedral and the end of the Camino de Santiago pilgrim routes, is some 25 kilometres away. Pontevedra's train station, roughly twenty minutes off by car, gives direct connections on to Vigo, A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela, while Cannas runs a second, more casual project, Ultramar, inside a landmark building shared with Pontevedra's town museum.

07Making the most of a stay

Pepe Vieira is an adults-only address: every guest must be at least eighteen, and pets are not admitted. Check-in runs from 3.30pm and check-out is at noon. Book the tasting menu well ahead of a stay; with only fourteen rooms and a dining room built for slow evenings, this is not a place that rewards last-minute plans.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.