Piripi, the best tapas in Alicante?
ALICANTE
El Portal Tavern & Wines _(Bilbao, 2; tel. 965 14 32 69 €€) _
**The Bar (with capital letters) ** that redefines the idea we had of this type of establishment. Haute cuisine behind the bar. The Portal is the particular whim of Carlos Bosch and Sergio Serra , illustrious gastronomes for placing Alicante on the gourmet map and doing so with an unexpected proposal: a bar. Yes indeed , "The bar".
Cocktail bar with eight bartenders, a dream cellar, seamless open kitchen , a space (designed by Toni Espuch) that has nothing to envy to any (good) New York bar, and dishes that leave no room for error: sautéed boletus with Serrano ham, Muchamiel tomatoes, cherry gazpacho or almadraba red tuna . A) Yes, who needs experiments?
Portal & Wine It is the only embassy of the Krug champagne brand in Spain. With what we like bubbles to us...
Lobster rice from El Portal
the ereta _(Parque de La Ereta, s/n; tel. 965 143 250; €€€€) _
Wonderful restaurant on the Santa Barbara Castle with honest, human and tasty cuisine. In the table. Dani Frías' watchtower on Mount Benacantil continues –with a slow and sure step– his climb towards that imaginary decalogue: that of the essential restaurants of the Valencian Community.
Alicante classic recipe book without fear of the avant-garde (what they call "third way").
Three Remarkable Dish Menus (corvina and algae tartar; cuttlefish meatball; squid bolognese or a fabulous arròs amb ceba: rice with onion, fennel, bonito and salted alioli) and a room where warmth and humanity reign. Give me what you want! This was gastronomy.
Dani adds and continues with Try , a more casual bar, with the spirit of a gastrobar but haute cuisine.
Views from La Ereta
Tipsy _(Avda. de Óscar Esplá, 30; tel. 965 22 79 40; €€€) _
Exceptional product and wonderful rice dishes under a simple rule: here what rules is the product.
One of the favorite restaurants Joel Robuchon –and it will be for something–. We also like what the owner family has done around the Castelló School: Nou Manolín, Piripi, Pópuli Bistró and Vadevins.
Different ways of approaching the same essence: the happiness of the diner from an exceptional raw material (everything else is noise); Joselito ham, seafood from the markets of Santa Pola and Denia, red prawn, Vicente Leal salted fish, Discarlux high loin steaks, wild tuna, Muchamiel tomatoes and a well winery washed down with Sherry wines, thanks to David Valero, sommelier
Piripi is also a tapa: loin, tomato, cheese and bacon. yum.
Piripi, the best tapas in Alicante?
ALTEA
Ca Joan _(Partida La Olla, 146; tel. 966 88 32 34 €€€) _
One of those restaurants where true devotion to a dish is breathed. We have come here to eat meat.
Meat temples in Spain? La Castillería in Vejer, El Capricho in León, Etxebarri in Atxondo, Askua in Valencia and Ca Joan in Altea.
This house found in the beef and ox meat and their long maturations (up to 400 days with specimens of the Galician blonde breed over ten years old) the territory where to plant your flag.
Abril was a pioneer in subjecting his pieces to such a long aging –which so many steakhouses have copied later–; but it was here, in front of Altea beach, where the search for the most intense and telluric flavor germinated.
Not everything was going to be meat: wonderful espardeñas, wild fish and, of course, the Denia red prawn.
CALPE/CALP
Audrey´s by Rafa Soler. Hotel Diamante Beach _(Juan Carlos I, 48; tel. 608 66 76 37; €€€) _
Rafa Soler is in charge of this creative restaurant, guilty of putting Calpe on the gastronomic map.
Audrey's is the result of the tenacity, sweat and enthusiasm of this cook (worked in the kitchens of Martín Berasategui or L´Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris) and his determination to make Calpe a "pushpin" of good taste on the route of the Marina Alta . She has made it.
Audrey's is on the mezzanine level of the Hotel Diamante Beach and she bases her proposal on raising the simplest product: mackerel or tomatoes from Juan's garden, all i pebre of shrimp or rock mullet, without forgetting the totems of the Mediterranean; red prawn, lobster with sea cream, espardeñas or the wonderful sticky pigeon rice.
Beware of the selection of champagnes from small producers that it makes Cesar Hernandez Coca.
Audrey´s by Rafa Soler
** Beat ** _(Urbanization Marisol Park, 1; tel. 965 87 57 00; €€€) _
One of the most appealing (gastronomic) surprises in the Marina Alta: creative cuisine and a room that exemplifies the most refined service.
fine dining in the best sense of the word: a proposal where kitchen and dining room merge to make the diner happy, so that (they) feel the protagonist of all this. Jose Manuel Miguel, Just arrived from conquering Paris in the kitchens of Il Vino and Goust, he returns to his house with the lesson learned: slowly and good lyrics.
Theirs is a sensible, territorial and classic cuisine –and better still, we are tired of experiments–: marinated quail with smoked eel, dentex with watercress or a fabulous rice with espardeñas and stew of pig trotters.
His thing is to spend the weekend in Cookbook Hotel (which hosts this restaurant) and also enjoy its most rogue proposal: Comfort .
COCENTAINE
L'Escaleta _(Ascent to Estación del Norte, 205; tel. 965 59 21 00; €€€€) _
The best moment of one of the great unknowns (still) in Spain.
The temple (more than appropriate title) of Kiko Moya and Alberto Redrado, At the foot of Sierra Mariola, it has been a refuge for authentic race gastronomes for years. Etxebarri, Cataria, Mugaritz or L´Escaleta They are the kind of restaurants where you come for the highest prize: the best gastronomic experience of your life.
Dishes for memory: fresh almond cheese with mead; bread and butter; salted red shrimp; muddy mullet; blanquet with carob and truffle; Sticky rice with tendons and white truffle... Don't miss it.
You should not leave without trying "Like a brioche", one of those desserts to remember for a lifetime.
Of those restaurants that change your life
DENIA
Miguel's Baret _(Palau Historian, 1; tel. 673 74 05 95; €€) _
The most requested bar in Spain meets expectations with an undeniable equation: to feed well.
Going against it has served Michael Ruiz for so many things there will be no way to mess it up to go with the flow . Normal. He put aside the spotlights and the stars because of a lifelong bar that today (what things) is the most coveted table in Spain next to the Celler de Can Roca and DiverXo.
The formula? So simple it's scary cook what the earth gives us in each season and get the most out of each product. Well that. To cry, the veal sweetbreads, the apple pie or the duck liver and sweet potato pastisset. And look what's coming: Miquel's Vermouth. What we needed.
The star dish is cuttlefish figatells . As for how to get a table: good luck.
El Farallo _(Fénix, 10; tel. 966 43 06 52; €€€) _
The temple of the red shrimp is also the refuge of so many lost gastronomes.
In today's saturated world of catwalk chefs and too many forgettable menus, cathedrals like El Faralló are lacking; parishes where to “take refuge” and guys like Javier Alguacil, whose religion only has one commandment: the product.
Everything works well in this house: Javier's sense of smell, Julia Lozano's good sense, the fantastic rice dishes, the dried octopus, the tellinas with olive oil, the mojama and that terrace where civility and Mediterranean tradition reign (hopefully not the let us never forget) to gather the whole family around a table.
dinner is the best time (with very fresh prawns after the day's catch, brought from the Denia fish market) to touch the sky in El Faralló.
The temple of the red shrimp
Fish I Brases _(Plaza Benidorm, s/n; tel. 965 78 50 83; €€€) _
Living history of product cuisine in Spain, the project of Thomas Arribas lives, perhaps, the best moment of him.
Fish and Brases It was born at the same time that Tomás left El Poblet in the hands of Quique Dacosta and it emerged (in our opinion) as a project that wanted to be too many things ( oyster bar, Japanese, rice dishes, gastrobar and gastronomic space ) . But, fortunately, time has cleared up any doubts.
Today it is one of the product cathedrals of the Valencian Community and the reasons are endless: red prawns, shrimps, Denia lobster; oysters, spider crabs and lobsters from the North, Kobe beef or sea urchins, dried octopus, espardeñas, eels and red mullet . Fabulous.
If possible, enjoy dinner on the roof terrace top of the fish, with the unbeatable view of the boats arriving at the port of the town.
Quique Dacosta Restaurant _(Ctra. Las Marinas, km 3Urbanización El Poblet; tel. 965 78 41 79; €€€€€) _
The most successful restaurant in the Valencian Community lives its deepest moment.
We are running out of praise for Quique Dacosta. More than 1,000 dishes created since 1995! And a whole decade in the "ointment" of the best restaurants in Spain: In addition to, perhaps most importantly, the unanimous recognition of colleagues and lovers of good food around the world.
His present is dressed in memory (the gastronomy of Denia), sensitivity, culture, territory and forgotten flavors , which he recovers in a menu where beauty dances hand in hand with creativity. Impossible to highlight a dish. There are few truly must-see restaurants: this one, of course, is it.
His socarrat has signs of becoming a true inexhaustible classic. Of course: you will not find it on the menu.
ELS POBLETS
The Setla-Cuina to the Almadrava _(Ctra. de las Marinas, 2B; tel. 966 19 05 25; €€) _
This is a simple eating house whose DNA dresses up as a vegetable garden and fish market.
It is easy to say that of seasonal cuisine for "Mediterranean", share and enjoy. But bringing it to fruition is another story. As well, Miguel Fruits (in the kitchen) and Ximo Salva They have more than succeeded: a gastrobar on the beach of L'Almadrava that represents exactly what a bistro should be: haute cuisine at popular prices that changes to the rhythm of the market and the seasons.
We really like the sardines with tomato, the peas with snow peas and guacamole or the Iberian bacon from Conil with apricot and thyme papillote. Let La Setla continue like this.
Very attentive to Ximo Salva's suggestions about off-the-letter products that arrive daily.
The octopus with pilota and putxero from Setla
XABIA
Bon Amb _(Ctra. Benitachell, 100; tel. 965 08 44 40; €€€€) _
The most important restaurant in the history of Jávea, Bon Amb, is Gastronomy with capital letters.
A terrace that is already a sentimental refuge for so many good diners (at the foot of the Montgó Natural Park ) and a team of which we never imagined such an overwhelming evolution: Alberto Ferruz, in the kitchen, and Pablo Catalá, in the living room , have managed in a very few years to create a unique space where homage is paid to the gastronomic tradition of the High Marina and to a cuisine that does not want to forget the territory: ancestral salted scallop, with roasted corn, chili and lime or some fabulous cocochas.
To round it off, a room that remains faithful to the most nineteenth-century (and Frenchified) tradition of savoir faire and good taste .
Bon Amb is a destination for lovers of the good where you can indulge in an eternal after-meal conversation . When in doubt, it is better to opt for lunch than for dinner.
On the outside it is as impressive as its dishes
The Rodat _(Murciana, 9; tel. 966 47 07 10; €€€) _
Nazario Cano is at the forefront of one of the most personal, risky and brave proposals in the Mediterranean.
this chef, l´enfant terrible of the creative cuisine of the Valencian Community, It seems that he has found his refuge in The Rodat , a beautiful hotel on the Costa Blanca in which bougainvillea adorn the cobblestones until “A long way, short step”, the most gastronomic menu "Nazario" : 20 passes where the product (cocochas, red shrimp, galleys, Norway lobster, tuna, marrow or fish from the market) dances to the sound of the overflowing creativity of a chef in a dazzling moment
Nazario is accompanied by Paco García in the kitchen and Joan Coll at the head of a more than solvent winery.
This is one of those restaurants where you give in to the creativity of the “madman” behind the bar and don't look back.
The Rodat mussels
Tula _(Avda. de la Libertad, 36; tel. 966 47 17 45; €€) _
A newcomer (on the Arenal beach) destined to turn the gastronomic panorama of the Marina Alta upside down.
Tula is the flight forward of Borja Susilla and Clara Puig (after passing through the kitchens of Quique Dacosta and Casa Gerardo ), a simple eatery on the beach whose ideology is flavour, temporality and freedom: a proposal with no strings attached other than fun and market produce.
Technical and fresh dishes that reflect his love for so many cuisines in the world and the gall of those who know no debt other than pleasure: shisho leaf taco with bacon, cold mullador with garum dressing, quail chili, roe deer tartare or the marvelous black pickled oyster.
Save room for dessert, because lemon ginger cinnamon yoghurt is really fabulous.
€ Less than €10
€€ Up to €20
€€€ Up to €50
€€€€ More than 50 €
*You can find the 2018 Gastronomic and Wine Guide in a digital version for your devices, at Manzana , Zinium Y google play .