Spanish delights
25th August 2017
I have recently got back from a lovely break in a very sunny and very hot Spain. My boyfriend and I went out with a couple of our friends, and we had a great 11 days away together. Whilst I will admit that the days were spent lounging around in the sun, or playing on the enormous unicorn float in the pool, the evenings were all about food! As we were staying in a villa we did spend a couple of nights in having BBQs and enjoying the local seafood, meat and red wine!
We were lucky enough to be staying in Gran Alacant, which is only a 20 minute drive away from Alicante, a lovely port city with great restaurants and bars. We popped in a few times to taste some Spanish cuisine. On the first visit we went to a lovely restaurant, La Taberna del Gourmet, which we had found online and apparently has the best paella in Alicante. We had a selection of starters and then some yummy paella. The great thing about here was that you got your own individual paella, and as I am not a massive seafood fan I went for the chicken and vegetable paella, which was delicious! Sorry no photos I inhaled it too quickly!
Alicante Marina
The main reason for writing this blog though was to tell you all about 2 local tapas restaurants we went to. The first one is El Sentio, and it is about a 15 minute walk inland from the marina, up some narrow streets that house some beautiful old buildings.
El Sentio is a tiny restaurant with exposed stone walls and non- English speaking staff. We managed to communicate to order tapas and beer, the first one round came and it was pork in a creamy sauce on bread. It sounds a bit odd and before I tasted I thought it looked odd, but as soon as I took my first bite I couldn’t wait for the next. Then we had chicken skewers glazed in balsamic, mmmmm! The third and final tapas at El Sentio was Spanish omelette on bread, carb overload, but again delicious. The best thing about this place was the price, the grand total for 4 of us to have tapas and beers was 24 Euros!!!
The second tapas place we went to was my favourite, I just loved the food and the set up. Cerveceria Sento Rambla, is a tiny little restaurant, so small in fact that they have ledges out the front where people can stand and eat. By the time we got there the inside was full, so we popped ourselves next to the ledge outside and ordered. The first lot of food came, again accompanied by a glass of cold beer. Firstly, we had beef meatballs in a peanut sauce, the sauce was so delicious I was scooping it up off the plate. We also got pork and bacon lollipop, with chilli jam on top, this was mouth-wateringly good, so much so it is making me hungry whilst writing this! We then got fried new potatoes, with rocket leaves, fried egg and foie gras along with bread sticks with foie gras, chilli jam and Parmesan sprinkled on top. To end at Cerveceria Sento Rambla we had chicken and rice in a creamy sauce with Parmesan melting on top, mmmmm! They did ask us if we wanted another round, however as you can imagine we were all stuffed by this point.
Beef meatballs and pork and bacon lollipops.
We did go to other tapas restaurants, however these were my favourites, I liked the feel of them, and that most of the customers were local. I enjoyed the fact that you just went in and asked for tapas and beer, not ordering specific dishes. It meant I was eagerly waiting to see what the next dish was.
Oh and one last place to mention is El Coscorron, which is a little underground bar that serve mojitos from a little silver tea pot. This place was so cool, you have to enter through some little hatch doors, that you easily could walk straight past. Once inside there is writing all over the wall, along with hand drawn pictures by customers, and money pinned up from all over the world. Josh and I will permanently be part of El Coscorron as we wrote our names on the wall. To make this place even better the mojitos are delicious!
