Today was my final day in Marbella after the 4 Day Walking festival. I spent the day shopping, sightseeing and having a swim in the sea before my final treat of the holiday - a Tapas Adventure.
This is how it is described: "
Enjoy a one-of-a-kind dining experience in Marbella—and discover the region’s culinary heritage—on this small-group tour. Meet your guide in Marbella’s Old Town, and come hungry: you’ll head off the tourist trail and will visit three locals-frequented tapas bars and bodegas. Enjoy numerous bites and drinks. As you go, your guide will also point out Old Town highlights and share stories about the city’s history."
Sounds good. But we weren't meeting until 6:30. Meanwhile, on my exploring, I had decided to visit the Central Market, which I had walked past several times between my hotel and the Old Town over the past few days.
Later I discovered that the eating place here is renowned. It features on
another tastemarbella.com tour.
But on to the Adventure. Here are a few photos:
We were to meet at the fountain here in a corner of the Plaza de Los Naranjos.
When our guide Natalia (on the right) arrived only myself and two ladies from Scotland were waiting...
As she started talking about the history and the sights to be seen in the square, the remaining 4 of our party arrived. We set off through the narrow streets towards our first stop,
El Estrecho.
Here we were served with some Verdeho white wine and 6 dishes from
the menu: Russian Salad, Octopus Salad (my favourite), Salmorejo Soup, Homemade meatballs, Chickena and Ham croquettes and Pil-pil prawns.
As we went along Natalia told us a lot about the
history of Marbella, including why the streets were so narrow.
It was very cosy in the bar.
Our dishes were laid on the side for us to help ourselves. Here we had some Albariño wine and more interesting dishes: Some pork shoulder, tip of pork loin, chorizo, tuna, tomato salad and Payoyo cheese served with a sort of pale yellow jam. Natalia offered us €10 if we could guess what it is made from. We had 3 guesses each, but failed to identify it was spaghetti squash.
There is quite a lot of bullfighting memorabilia on the walls.
And so it was on through the streets with more stories of the history of Marbella to our final stop....
We started with olives and fried aubergine fingers....
....followed by dogfish and then sardines. Our restaurant is the only one in the Old Town with the barbecue for cooking sardines as they do in
Chiringuitos on the beach.
Natalia demonstrated the technique for eating them
Then, to finish with, came the red mullet... just little ones.
Lovely! We then all made our separate ways home through the Old Town.
Well that was a most convivial evening. Natalia was a brilliant hostess, full of information, and engaged with each of us. The food and drink were pretty good too. Highly recommended! Thank-you Natalia and my friendly fellow-adventurers. And, furthermore, now I know some great places for tapas the next time I'm in Marbella. A great way to finish my holiday - it's back to the UK in the morning.
You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and book directly with tastemarbella.com here.
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