Skina Marbella Review (2025): Michelin Two Stars, Tasting Menu and Prices

I first knew Skina as a tiny corner room in Marbella’s old town, a sliver of a restaurant whose ambitions always outpaced its footprint. Returning this year, the restaurant felt more assured than ever. The cooking has gained clarity and confidence, carrying the focus and precision of a kitchen working fully within its two-star identity while still hinting at higher ambitions.

Location & Atmosphere

Skina now resides in a restored villa, a quiet setting that gives the cuisine air and poise. White walls, high ceilings and a measured brightness replace the compressed intimacy of the old town corner. Guests begin in the kitchen with a few opening bites and a glass of Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut before being led to the table within the same generously proportioned space. The room is calm, conversation carries softly, and the choreography is unforced. Service has the softness that comes from experience rather than performance, and pacing keeps attention on the food’s line and detail.

Culinary Style or Distinctive Character

The kitchen speaks Andalusia with modern clarity. Seafood leads, framed by regional sauces such as ajoblanco and gazpachuelo, and by the saffron-tinted sopa en amarillo. Heat and acidity are measured, salinity precise, textures clean. The restaurant is owned by a sommelier, and you feel that sensibility on the plate: balance first, then flourish.

Kitchen Reception

Before taking your seat, you are welcomed in the kitchen with a glass of Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut and a couple of small bites. The team is introduced by name and role, the pace is unhurried, and the brief encounter tunes the palate and the ear to the brigade’s rhythm. It sets the tone for the evening: ease, precision, and quiet hospitality.

Menu / The Dishes

Skina offers two tasting paths. The Gran Cru menu with a premium wine pairing is priced at 574 € per person. I chose the Seasonal menu, an elegant progression from the sea to land and back to almonds and cocoa, priced at 349 € per person or 499 € with wine pairing.

Red tuna tartar with pistachio ajoverde
Hand-cut tuna set in a cold pistachio ajoverde, crowned with caviar. The soup’s herbal, nutty chill sharpens the fish while the caviar adds saline lift and fine pop.

Sweet shrimp with Thai broth and snow peas
Aromatic and light. The broth gently nudges sweetness forward; peas bring snap and chlorophyll.

Scarlet shrimp, its sopa en amarillo and saffron
A concentrated hymn to the product. The golden sauce carries warmth without weight, letting iodine sing.

Smoked "Sarda" gazpachuelo with nori seaweed pesto
A Málaga classic re-drawn: silken, smoky, and enlivened by nori’s maritime depth.

Red mullet "between two seas"
A beautifully handled red mullet: the skin and scales flashed with hot oil until they crisp, while the flesh stays just translucent. The dish sits between Mediterranean brightness and the deeper, saline memory of the Atlantic.

Beef tenderloin, mole, sweet potato and demi-glace
A measured step onto land. The mole reads as perfume rather than heft; sweet potato softens without dulling.

Ajoblanco of Malagan almonds, muscatel and rhubarb
Cold and satin-textured, with muscatel’s floral lift checked by rhubarb’s acidity. A palate rinse disguised as dessert.

Chocolate, vanilla and banana
Familiar notes, disciplined sweetness. Texture does the talking.

Wine

Sommelier-owner Marcos Granda is the driving force behind the restaurant, and wine is treated as a central pillar rather than a complement. The list is curated with care and the pairings privilege precision over novelty, calibrating alcohol and oak to the kitchen’s measured style so seafood stays luminous and sauces articulate. From the welcoming pour of Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut to the premium Gran Cru pairing, the wine program leads the experience with quiet authority.

Verdict

Skina cooks at a very high level, with precise technique and well-judged flavours, but the restaurant does not yet deliver the sense of inevitability that defines true three-star dining. Its two Michelin stars are fully earned; the jump to a third remains aspirational rather than imminent.

The restaurant’s biggest limitation is the rigidity of its Seasonal Menu. What I was served in May aligns almost dish-for-dish with what appears online in November. This may offer consistency, but it also signals a lack of creative momentum. Many top kitchens refine a seasonal set; the best evolve continuously and shape the menu around inspiration, product and personality. At Skina, the polish is there, yet the sense of discovery is muted. For locals or repeat guests the static rhythm becomes noticeable.

The pricing, however, already signals three-star intent. The 574 € Grand Cru menu with premium pairing matches or exceeds the cost of Spain’s leading restaurants, and the 349 € Seasonal Menu outprices several actual three-stars, including Disfrutar, Cocina Hermanos Torres and Azurmendi. It is rare to encounter such ambition on the bill without equivalent ambition in the creative arc of the menu.

Skina is, in my view, the best restaurant in Marbella and certainly the most expensive, but the cooking still lacks the singular identity and emotional resonance that define the country’s most distinctive kitchens. Technique alone will not secure a third star. What is missing is a stronger personal voice and more willingness to push beyond a safe, well-polished formula. And with Dani García’s former three-star restaurant long closed, Marbella again moves into 2026 without a three-star address - Skina the closest, but still some distance from delivering the kind of unmistakable authorship that would make it inevitable.

Practical note: the same owners also operate Nintai, Marbella’s one-star Japanese restaurant, an intimate omakase counter built around precise cuts, warm rice, and a quietly disciplined craft. It is a very different experience from Skina, but equally considered, and well worth seeking out if you appreciate high-level sushi.

Location: Marbella, Spain
Chef: Mario Cachinero
Michelin rating: ★★
Visited: May 2025

For a wider lens on Andalusian seafood, consider a detour to Ángel León’s Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María.