On Malaga’s pedestrianised Calle Marin Garcia, we found two options for dinner: Lo Gueno Meson and Meson la Alegria, Lo de Jorge. Both had menus on display, but we opted for the latter as we felt it was slightly cheaper and offered a better tapas menu. At 7.30pm, the Spanish were still coming off the beach and not even thinking about dinner, and so there was only one other couple eating at the pavement tables.
The laminated menu had both Spanish and English with tapas on one side and main courses on the other. The wine list featured pictures of all the bottles with a description, and it was good to see many priced reasonably at around €15. We chose a Sauvignon Blanc and a bottle of agua con gas.
The tapas were all priced between €2.25 and €4.75 and being unsure of portion sizes, we initially opted for just four: Russian salad (ensaladilla Rusa – a good sized portion of vegetables in mayonnaise with flaked tuna topping); chorizo picante (six slices of what was a very spicy and delicious meat); tortita camerones (a thin saucer sized fried pancake with prawns); and meatballs (albondigas – two meatballs in a rich tomato sauce). Along with two nice baguettes which were automatically brought to the table, it was fabulous.
However, we were still a little peckish and with bread and salad remaining, chose two more tapas: pork skewers (carne morduna – whilst it wasn’t on a skewer, the really tender pieces of pork were in a delicious sauce) and finally, prawns (langostinos pil pil – four large prawns served piping hot in garlic oil in a heavy mini le Creuset dish. It was all very delicious and having worn white shorts, I had asked for a second napkin for protection. When the table was cleared rather inexpertly by a rather large waiter (there were two others, a young thin one who had taken our order and a jolly one), I feared for a catastrophe as he tried to clear the table in one go.
We finished our wine at a leisurely pace and were really surprised that as the night wore on, the place didn’t get really busy, despite the waiters valiant attempts to hijack every passing likely customer. Interestingly, the other option, El Gueno became very busy, but with a bill of €41.25 and a complimentary mini glass tankard of something similar to Baileys, we were more than happy with our choice.
