Tapas tasting in El Puerto: our top 5

If you ask us, any visit to Andalucía should absolutely involve a tapas night out. El Puerto is well-known for it amazing food, so a tapas tasting evening is something you really don’t want to miss out on!

More difficult than deciding where to go (there are lots of amazing places pretty much everywhere in town), is actually what to order. Not easy to know, as some bars or restaurants have so many options you could easily go back and try something new for several weeks.

Find here our top 5 recommendations:

• Salmorejo: similar to gazpacho in that they are both cold soups with tomatoes being their main ingredient, salmorejo is thicker (you eat it with a spoon as opposed to drinking it from a glass) and doesn’t have as many other vegetables such as cucumber and onion in it. It has got a lot more garlic in it though! We prefer it over gazpacho however and it is definitely worth a try.
• Carne al toro – a specialty in the area. As you might suspect, this is bull’s meat, and if you have never tried it before you have no idea what you are missing! The meat is very soft, succulent and incredibly tasty and usually served with fries.
• Pimientos fritos – our favourite choice at the feria! Meals in Spain can rely heavily on meat, fish and then some more meat, so ordering some vegetables separately is certainly needed if you want to get to your daily vegetable dosis. These green peppers are not the spicy ones but the sweet peppers and are grilled, adding a very tasty addition to your meal. Eat them like the locals do: without any cutlery.
• Boquerones – fried anchovies (boquerones fritos) are incredibly appetizing! If you’d rather not go for the fried option, order some “pan con queso y boquerones” (bread with cheese and anchovies), which is even yummier!
• Habitas con jamón – our absolute favourite: baby broad beans with the famous Spanish cured ham and a decent amount of olive oil. We never knew broad beans could be this interesting until we tried this tapa. And when you’ve eaten them all, you should have enough olive oil left over to dip your bread in until there is absolutely none left.

There you go: our top 5 tapas of “a little bit of everything” to try out and enjoy in El Puerto if you don’t know what to order out of all the different options!

Did you know: we also do tapas tasting as an evening activity in our school tours! We can include this on one of the evenings in the programme, meaning your students will be able to share in this unique Spanish experience! It’s also a great way for students to practice their food vocabulary in context.