I don’t very often get to write about food! I know for some people, the food is half the point of travelling but it’s not something that’s ever worked for me because I have ARFID and food is an aspect of travel I generally just have to survive. But Catherine and Esther are normal people and they want food, so we went out for food! The first place we went was the local Dia supermarket, where we got stuff for breakfast and “for the house” which we ended up having to divide between our Ryanair-sized luggage or leave behind on Tuesday morning but mostly we went out, because no one wants to cook and wash up on holiday.
Tapas
We were staying just by Jardin de los Monos, a little park full of purple jacaranda trees which happened to be a ten or eleven minute walk along Calle Victoria to Plaza de la Merced, which is a major square on the edge of the historic centre, home to Picasso’s birthplace and a lot more purple jacaranda trees. According to all the rules, this is exactly where we shouldn’t be eating – it’s where where waiters try to grab you as you pass by and show you laminated menus with pictures of food and their names in English, textbook tourist trap restaurants. But isn’t most of Málaga a tourist trap, or at least the parts within easy walking distance of the centre?
The first night we went to Picasso Bar Tapas, lured in by the Chef’s Choice, five tapas dishes for €20 but give or take one exception, you don’t get to choose what you get. I was curious about tapas. I’ve never actually been present when anyone’s had tapas in real life and I still can’t quite help picturing what our year 9 Spanish teacher, Mr Warbis, attempted to describe as “lid food”. The name actually comes from the Spanish verb tapar, to cover. I know tapas as a meal is no longer a little morsel served on top of your beer or wine but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was actually going to be.
It’s when you’re encouraged to make a meal out of several small plates! Well, really, it’s supposed to be a light snack or an appetiser but the tapas restaurants definitely sell it as a main meal made up of small dishes. Instead of picking one thing and being stuck with it, you can pick three or four and make it into a kind of mini buffet.
After much examination of the menu, the Chef’s Choice was declined. Catherine had the beef cheek and fried aubergine in honey, Esther had the fried prawns and ham croquettes and they both had the Spanish omelette. I may not eat myself but I’m a sort of academic enthusiast of food, possessor of a ridiculous number of cookbooks and I thought it all looked very interesting. Everything came in shallow earthenware dishes and we were each given a decorative blue and yellow plate to eat our portion off. Tapas is a great way, incidentally, to disguise the person who’s come to the restaurant with no intention of eating anything.
The fried aubergine in honey was apparently very good but the omelette quite average. It kind of resembled a sponge. The beef was enormous and the prawns came with a slab of lemon. In fact, the fried aubergine was the best fried aubergine Catherine had ever had and it looked appealing even to me. I can definitely enjoy the experience of sitting at a table of tapas!
Trying both to join in the meal and be a little bit brave, I had a drink, and rather than just the Coke or Fanta I would normally have, I went for the homemade lemonade with mint. Esther quite liked it but I wasn’t a fan. It turned out I should have given it a good stir with my straw because the top half was very sour and the bottom half, which was pure sugar syrup, was revolting.
We had snacks from the local supermarket rather than go out the second night but on the third, we went back to Plaza de la Merced, to El Clan, two doors up. Esther wanted some proper Spanish paella and so we had it as part of the tapas. This time, everything came in pretty little blue and white dishes and we all had matching blue and white plates. Besides the chicken paella, we had patatas con alioli, which I’m pretty sure was meant to be aïoli, roasted peppers, meatballs in some kind of chilli sauce and I think some kind of stew that I can no longer either remember or identify. I wish I’d taken a picture of the menu or written this three weeks ago.
I liked the earthenware dishes from Picasso but these plates were prettier and it’s always interesting to have something new to look at. These ones were fine – the paella was approved even by Catherine who’s not a fan of rice dishes – but I don’t think anyone marked anything out as the best this time. I decided not to experiment with drinks tonight and just went for peach juice, which I wasn’t expecting to come in a little glass bottle. It was very night but a bit small. If I remember rightly, this was the night Catherine had the local sangria
On our last night, we ventured into town, to Lolita, an Andalusian tavern-style restaurant where we weren’t sure whether the dishes were tapas or half-portions. We got a collection as per usual – fried aubergines in honey again, which wasn’t bad but wasn’t as good as at Picasso’s. Esther had a mini burger of some kind which came with crisps, there was a portion of potatoes in some kind of semi-spicy orange sauce and something that I can’t quite identify from the photos but might be crispy chicken bits with crisps. It also came with a basket of bread, which was excellent because for the first time, I could actually sit and eat too. Naively, it never crossed our minds that this wasn’t complementary and we would be charged for it – if I’d realised, I would have actually finished the basket.
As for drinks, I had some kind of yellow fruity drink which I’m pretty sure contained orange and pineapple juice and grenadine. Learning from Picasso’s, I stirred it well and it was very satisfying. Esther thought hers was very watery and that might be down to me having lower standards, being accustomed to squash or it might be down to her straw not being long enough to reach much beyond the ice layer. Either way, it was pretty and it was nice to drink something properly enjoyable while everyone ate!
Snacks
Although we had breakfast (own-brand chocolate cereal, juice & tea) in the apartment, we ate out for lunch most days and we had a few snacks. I was pleased to find we’d more or less crossed off the entire Spanish to-eat list between us by the end of four days!
We had lunch most days from Empanadas Malvón. I was a bit dubious (because ARFID…) but I was also hungry and I could see four-cheese empanadas. The four cheeses in question are mozzarella, gouda, cheddar and provolone and those looked Julie-appropriate, as my boss phrases it. There was one left and so I thought I’d give it a try, half-expecting this to be a mistake. But they heated our order of empanadas up and it only took one experimental bite to discover that I love hot cheesy empanadas! The next day I had two of them! Over the three visits we made to the shop, I’m pretty sure Esther and Catherine had smashburger and mild meat empanadas and a touch I particularly enjoyed is that they stamp the name of the empanada on top of each so you know which one you’re eating if you order more than one.
To go with the empanadas, Esther and Catherine had a portion of Basque-style cheesecake from Bassk between them. You can buy a whole cheesecake in a box or just a slice and it comes in original or chocolate. Basque-style cheesecake is softer and more mousse-like than the kind I’m more familiar with and the top is caramelised. Without the name over the door, I probably wouldn’t have recognised it as cheesecake. It’s squishy and it easily falls apart when you stick a fork in it.
We also made a stop at Bun and Coffee for a giant doughnut. The original glazed ones were impressive enough but lots of them had piles of stuff on top – piles of cream or chocolate or fruit. I’m not a doughnut fan; I don’t love how oily they feel but I’d have gone for one soaked in cinnamon sugar if I’d been buying one.
Down at the harbour on a rainy afternoon, Esther got churros. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just skinny doughnuts with texture, the same oily sensation that I don’t love but you can’t come to Spain and not have at least one churro.
Drinks
I don’t know if we’ve ever really been the type to go out drinking but if we ever were, we really aren’t by now. That said, we did go hunting for drinks on Saturday night. The original plan had been the rooftop bar at La Terraza de La Alcazaba. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. There were effectively two bars up there – the one to the right was full but there was space at a table (albeit one marked reserved, which we were shown to) at the left-hand one. We took some quick photos of the view from up there but it was too busy and too crowded and not fun.
Instead, we went down to the harbour and found a cocktail bar called Nusa which overlooked the water. It had little booths at the back, sets of chairs at the front and high stools around high tables in the middle. We had to wait there some ten minutes before there was space for us, and even then Catherine had to interrupt a group that arrived ten minutes later and were met by someone different who didn’t know we’d been waiting.
But once we were in, it was good. We were given QR codes for the menu and disposable cardboard coasters. Catherine went for the mojito martini and in the excitement of trying to take pictures, spilled some of it. Because I’m slightly disgusting like that, I sampled it straight from the table and thought it was far too minty for my taste, although Catherine said it wasn’t that minty. It was very pretty and I liked how it came with a sprig of mint held on the rim with a miniature wooden clothes peg. Esther had a virgin colada and I should have had a pineapple juice or a frozen lemonade but I chickened out and had a Fanta. Orange-flavoured and fizzy, what more can you want?
Does it count that Catherine had a bottle of freshly-squeezed orange juice from the supermarket? I’ve seen these machines before but never figured out how they work. There’s a basket of oranges in the top and a rack of empty bottles next to it and somehow you combine the two to get a bottle of fresh juice. We looked at it every time we went in the supermarket but it was only on the last evening that someone saw Catherine looking at it and showed her how it works. There’s a tap and you just push it like the tap in your kitchen. We’d been looking at the buttons and the doors and all the complicated bit and it turns out, once you know how, it’s so easy!
And I think that’s it! Anyone else would tell you all about the coffee, because travel, writing and coffee are three things that seem to go together but in this particular case, none of us drink coffee. Catherine bought a box of teabags and had tea in the apartment but there was no coffee. So we had tapas, paella, cheesecake, doughnuts, empanadas, churros and fresh juice and I think that’s not a bad representation of Spanish food.
I Am A Polar Bear 