Whilst staying in Malaga, I had a friendly bet with friends over the five most popular Spanish tapas. My list included paella, which was rather derided. So imagine my joy when walking down Calle Sanchez Pastor, I spotted a board outside Taberna Quitapenas with a board listing their tapas with paella at number one. It was a must for that evening.
At 7.30pm,we got ensconced at a pavement table on the corner of the restaurant, and ordered a bottle of house white. When checking the menu, I realised that we were sat at a different restaurant: Esquina Sanchez Tapas and Cocina Espanola by Los Marangos. And whilst it didn’t have tapas paella, it would have won any prize for the restaurant with the longest name.
However, it seemed rude to leave as by now, a delightfully smiling, but small chap had brought out the wine and complimentary olives and bread basket.
To satisfy my curiosity, I went to check out the A board at what appeared to be the next-door restaurant, but found it was called Al Rudeo, and wasn’t the one with the paella tapas. The mystery was only solved a little later when a tiny restaurant sandwiched between us and Al Rudeo, opened at 8.30pm and brought out the tapas board with paella.
As we’d had a reasonably large lunch, we chose three fish tapas: atun tataki (six thin square slices of tuna with an Asian style dressing), tomatoes in mussels/mejillon (five half mussels cooked in a tomato broth) and boquerones (six anchovies, which were probably the best we had during our two weeks in Malaga). All the tapas were priced around €4. It was all that we hoped for, apart from tapas paella, and the bill came to €36.30.
