SPAIN - Fuengerola ... personal recommendations?

[annie33]

Hi,
I'm new to the forum and it all looks very interesting and helpful.
Can anyone recommend a nice value for money eatery in Fuengerola? There is so much choice but personal recommendations are always best.
Thanks

 

[jkgourmet]

I could help with Lanarote or Barcelona, but not this place. Sorry. If it's allowed here, I'd suggest you hop over to chowhound.com and ask them on their int'l/spain board.

 

[annie33]

Hi JKGourmet,
Thanks for the reply, hopefully someone can come up with some recommendations....we go to the Costa del sol in spring to avoid excessive heat!! I really enjoy tapas food but although I love fish
I'm afraid the paella I had once from a top restaurant was awful, so if anyone has a good recipe I'd love to have it.

 

[jkgourmet]

We had Paella twice when we visited Spain. Once in Lanzarote (the Canary Islands) and once in Barcelona (easier to find it at lunch than dinner, btw).

One of the most interesting things is that they were so totally different. The only similarities were that they both had rice and stuff mixed in them. They were different dishes. Both good, but different.

My point is this: you might consider trying paella in a different restaurant this time. We frequent the places locals go, rarely setting foot inside a well-known or tourist place, except for a drink to say we've been there (like Raffles in Singapore. Had the $16 Singapore Sling, and left.) We've generally gotten poor advice from our hotels (with rare exceptions) as they steer us to places they think are 'safe.'

We walk, looking for places that are filled with locals (hard to tell in some areas of the world, but never impossible). I also use Chowhound dot com A LOT before we leave. Just be careful of how old the posts are and that everybody's opinion varies.

 

[jkgourmet]

I'll add one more to the paella discussion. We visited a small place in Mexico called Ajijic last month. About forty miles south of Guadalajara, an area that National Geographic declared the second best climate in the world. After that, Americans and Canadians flocked to the town, bringing their desire for non-mexican food with them.

Accordingly, there is a wide variety of restaurants in this small Mexican town. Greek, Japanese, Thai, Chinese, many Italian, two Argentinian, and two spanish places.

We had paella at one of the spanish places last year. The chef was an American, retired Delta airline pilot, who now owned this restaurant. Standard chicken and sausage paella and quite good. Last month, we visited the other Spainish restaurant finding that the chef and owner were actually spanish. We felt adventurous and ordered the black paella. Black because they use squid ink in the sauce. Now this was a great paella. Looked rather horrible, but the taste was rich and decadent. Wonderful.

I'll have a look tomorrow and see if I have a photo that I can post.