Granada’s cuisine & wining with a matador

Andalusia is a great destination for foodies, as Spain is in general. In Granada’s cuisine, the Arabian and Jewish influences meet the latter-day Spanish traditions.
Eating tapas is, of course, a sure bet; Trevélez ham and chorizo are famous here. Not only tapas, but also stews and black pudding are popular in Granadian cuisine. Are you getting hungry yet? Let’s go!
While wining and dining out in Granada, you might also meet a real matador – that’s what happened to us.

*Includes a Booking.com affiliate link to an affordable hotel in Granada 

History of the Granadian kitchen

For more than 700 years, Granada was under Arab rule, and a large part of the inhabitants were Jewish; therefore, the combined heritage of these two cultures is evident in the area’s cuisine.

Common spices include cumin, coriander, nutmeg and cinnamon. Also raisins, almonds and honey are typical ingredients.

During the Moorish period the city’s Christian population was the only one consuming pork.
However, its use increased after the Catholics took over, as a sign of the power change.
Nowadays spicy chorizo sausages and black pudding are important features of the Granadian kitchen, too.

The typical Spanish dry-cured ham served in Granada is the Trevélez ham.
The sea is not too far away, so fish and seafood are common. In the winter hearty stews are popular.

Racións are great for hungry beasts

On our first night in Granada we were as hungry as mountain beasts in Sierra Nevada.
We had traveled all day by bus and had only had an early breakfast in Alicante.

It was a cool night, but we found a terrace that was covered and heated.
The menu looked good and was decently priced.

A bigger version of a tapa is known as ración, a portion. As its name suggests, a ración is meant to be a proper-sized meal.

We bypassed this fact due to our hunger pangs and ordered five racións for our table of two to share.
After the first three portions we were already completely stuffed, but because the food was good, we powered our way through the rest of the meals.

All the foods were delicious, but the best thing was the marriage of surf and turf: artichokes served with small clams and bacon.  

Overrated tapas-street Calle Navas

If you are looking for a concentration of nice and affordable small restaurants, one street to check out is Calle Gran Via de Colón. Head to the area that is located opposite the cathedral. 

We came here after wandering all day in Alhambra and Albaicin, and were thus starving.
We selected a place that we thought looked the nicest, sat on a table along the alley and had the waiter recommend us food and wine selections.
The recommendations were excellent. 

Being that this is Andalusia, the tapas culture is also strong in Granada. Many travelers mentioned Calle Navas as the most famous street for tapas restaurants. It’s a narrow pedestrian street just south of the cathedral, on the other side of the wide Calle Reyes Católicos.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the reputation of Calle Navas was overrated.
We walked up and down the street and noted that there were many restaurants located side by side, maybe some great ones too.
However, they were not actual tapas spots.

The best tapas bar in Granada

We did find one exception at the very beginning of the street.
Casa Fernando is a second-generation family restaurant founded in 1961. The owner couple takes very good care of the clients in Spanish.
The wife, the daughter of the original owners, did the waitressing and the husband was behind the bar and prepared the food.

In Granada, a tapa is traditionally served automatically when you order a drink. It’s typical for your table to get served tapas from a selection of ready-made ones on the desk.

Casa Fernando makes sure to keep this tradition alive and does so at a very affordable price.
Servings of fish, ham and vegetables flowed to our table regularly, along with small beers and glasses of wine.
These little tasting plates were so fulfilling that soon we had to request our drinks without tapas, and to forget our plans of a bigger dinner.

Outside, near the door, there were a couple of small tables. Since we had found such a nice restaurant, we decided to sit there for the rest of the evening.

After-hours wine with a matador

As the closing time approached, the owner couple lowered the door’s metal grid halfway down, as a sign that servings were finished and the restaurant was closing. Then came a surprise; the lady of the house motioned us to get inside.

We sat by the bar, and the owners happily kept the service going. The only other clients were a young couple sitting next to us. The lady then introduced us to them. – This gentleman here is a matador.
We were blown away as it was our first time meeting a matador, a highly appreciated person in Andalusian culture.
The language barrier prevented us from having a deeper conversation, and we are not fans of bullfighting at all.
Still, meeting a real matador is an opportunity you don’t get every day.

The next morning, after checking out of our hotel room, we enjoyed our last meal in Granada.
We had breakfast at one of the many cafes of Plaza de La Trinidad, next to *our affordable hotel. 
A Spanish cafe breakfast is usually a pleasant experience, and this one was no exception. 

The only downside was that getting the bill took so long that we missed the bus we had planned on taking to Málaga. 
Luckily, it wasn’t a long wait for the next one, so we forgave the cafe for its slowness in our minds.

Read next: Granada – much more than Alhambra

Translated from the original Finnish text Granadan keittiössä traditiot kohtaavat by Mirva Lempiäinen.
Mirva is a US-educated travel writer from Finland living in the French Caribbean.
Her blog is at Guadeloupeguide.com.