Apologies for a couple of things in advance ...
Firstly I love food so I'll probably go on a bit and as a result I'll have to split this report into several parts over the next few days.
Secondly we do have quite a few photos of the various dishes but we're still to get round to uploading these yet but I will update the report once we've done so.
Part 1:
After a very busy Saturday: (For me - a glorious day at the Scottish Cup Final, for her - sorting out my attempt at packing from the previous day !) we arrived at the port on Sunday 20th May, just after 1pm, a little tired but excited to be back. Having hastily checked into the
hotel and dumped the luggage it was a quick but pleasant walk along the Pine Walk to La Cantina for a Tapas lunch:
We immediately order two large beers (it’s always important to make sure you
stay hydrated when you arrive in a warmer climate !) and briefly read the menu before placing our order for lunch: Onion Rings, Frito, Pork & Mushrooms, Patatas Bravas and Cuttlefish. All the dishes were excellent but the Onion Rings were the stand out dish - they are done in a lighter Tempura style batter and much thinner than the traditional Onion Rings you usually get .... this was all washed down by 'dos más cervezas grandes' (I think
the first 2 must have evaporated in the heat !). Cost: €42 inc. tip
After lunch we took a short detour to
El Posito to book for the evening meal - we had a quick catch-up with Toni, Zak & Fernando and had just started chatting to Lyn and Colin when we were given 2 more beers and a small Paella .... thanks again to Colin for helping us out eating it (although, you didn't really need to eat the prawn shells !) - this was followed by slow stagger back to the hotel to relax, refresh and prepare for the evening ahead.
El Posito:
As has become traditional we started off with 2 of their fantastic Gin & Tonics (including Zaks 'lemon spaghetti'!) Having had a larger lunch than expected (we probably should have just had 4 Tapas at lunch instead of 5) we set about the bread, olives and alioli a little more slowly than usual and decided it would be sensible just to share a starter of Garlic Prawns. I chose the cod with bacon & alioli and Mogs picked the sole.
The Garlic prawns arrived and were beautiful as always - if you haven't tried these at El Posito you really should: in most of the restaurants in PP when you order garlic prawns you get a dish with oil in which there are some small prawns along with a few bits of garlic & chilli which is quite a nice dish however at El Posito you get a plate of huge prawns that that have been fried with garlic. The dish is beautifully seasoned and the combination of the sweet prawns, garlic and salt is just perfect.
Our meal was briefly interrupted as Jose saw us as he walked past on his way to Bonys, he saw us so popped in for a quick 'Hola Peoples !'.
Both fish mains were excellent and Tonis suggested wine 'Loess' was a great match. Again, in a futile attempt to be sensible we decided to skip dessert and just have a couple of americanos ....however the coffees arrived along with a two complementary brandies and couple of what we have decided to call fruit pizza (sort of thin danish pastry with fruit that I think Toni said came from Inca). Cost around: €85
As we were leaving Sparky provided a late breaking weather update - so on her advice we jumped into a taxi and made it back to the hotel a few minutes before the storm started - Thanks again Lyn !
Day 2:
There was some intermittent rain throughout the morning which we carefully avoided by strategically nipping into Los Faroles for a beer and stopping off at Bonys for lunch (a couple of tasty and reasonably priced baguettes).
As we were still a little concerned about the weather we decided to stay closer to the hotel for our evening meal - so went to Bar Coral:
2 Gin and tonics along with the bread, olives and alioli. In general, when we go to Bar Coral we usually skip the starter but this evening we must have been feeling particularly hungry as I chose the Asparagus with mayonnaise and Mogs the Prawn cocktail - both of which were 'okay' but in future I suspect we'll go back to the usual procedure of skipping the starter.
For mains we both had the fillet steak with roquefort sauce which, as we've come to expect, this was cooked superbly.
Desserts: Crema Catalan for me and 'Tentacion de Cappucino' for Mogs which were both good ... and even better were the coffees:
dos carajillos con brandy.
We also had a couple of Schnapps on the house.
Bill came to ninety-something Euros.
Day 3 ...... a little later !