Six years ago, when The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story asking “Is Spain the New France?”, Ferran Adria’s El Bulli restaurant and its ultra-modern cuisine began to enjoy the sort of coverage worldwide that money could not buy.

Since then a revolution in creative cuisine that had been simmering for a number of years has spread throughout regional Spain. Seven of the top 50 restaurants in the world, according to Restaurant magazine’s annual poll, are found in Spain. They are clustered in the northeast: four in or near San Sebastián and three in Catalonia. Meanwhile 131 restaurants in Spain were awarded Michelin stars this year, including six three-star awards.

When Gwyneth Paltrow and the notorious New York chef Mario Batali took a gourmet tour of Spain last autumn, they drove from Andalusia to Galicia.

En route they tasted traditional treats such as flamenquines (fried pork wrapped around cured ham) and Cambados clams steamed in crisp Albarino wine.

But speak to Spaniards and they tip the Basque country, Catalonia and Madrid as the hotspots to sample new flavours, with Valencia, the home of paella, gaining ground.

Of course, Spain has always had fabulous tapas bars, particularly in Seville, Córdoba, Barcelona and Bilbao, and hearty grassroots cooking that amplifies seasonal ingredients. But the leading chefs are breaking new ground.

“Cocina Nueva is conceptual cooking that pushes new boundaries. It’s about creative techniques and freedom. In that sense it appropriately echoes today’s Spain,” says Antonio Belles, chef and owner of London’s new-wave Spanish restaurant Lola Rojo.

According to Belles, who has worked in all of his country’s leading culinary regions, Spain has an abundance of talented young chefs emerging from the kitchens of restaurants such as El Bulli, who then take what they have learnt elsewhere. He says there are also regular food forums, notably in Madrid and San Sebastián, where chefs come together to explore new ideas and technology.

“These chefs interpret natural, seasonal food according to their technique and imagination,” says Belles. “For example, they may use a siphon of liquid nitrogen to solidify olive oil in one of their grandma’s recipes or serve a classic Crema Catalana with a hint of ginger and chilli.”

Paco Pérez, who like many of his peers is a graduate of the El Bulli kitchen, and chef-owner of the Michelin-starred Miramar restaurant, in Llançà, on the Costa Brava, also sees his cooking as a sort of “polishing of traditional cuisine to reflect the region”.

Like many artists, Pérez finds his inspiration from the immediate world around him – from flowers and the sea, for example – and he feels rewarded when his food stirs an emotional response in a diner.

The unassuming Arzak restaurant in San Sebastián has been wowing gourmets since the 1970s. Today a father and daughter team serves a stream of deftly crafted dishes such as oysters in edible shells, squid served with three colours of “sand” made from finely ground bread-crumbs, and roast wood pigeon with cider and yuzu jelly.

The elegant Basque seaside resort is said to have more Michelin stars per capita than any other city in the world. The neighbourhood competition includes the three-star Restaurante Martin Berasategui. If you can’t get a table here, Berasategui has another four restaurants in town while Andoni Luis Aduriz’s Mugaritz, in Errenteria, ranked at No.4 in the list of the world’s 50 top restaurants.

Aduriz is the new golden boy of Spanish cooking and delivers technically perfect dishes such as crab meat in aspic and liquid nitrogen, lamb’s trotter braised in a salted toffee of lactose and fresh cream, and scallops with amaranth in a clay sauce.

In Catalonia there are a handful of restaurants that are a match for the heavily overbooked El Bulli. Notably Carme Ruscalleda’s Sant Pau, in Sant Pol de Mar, near Barcelona, the only restaurant run by a woman to garner three Michelin stars in Spain. Ruscalleda creates delicate soulful dishes from highest quality Mediterranean ingredients including one dish that mixes 13 local vegetables, sea urchins and apple clear soup with her father’s home-grown olive oil.

There are several excellent restaurants in Gerona, too.