Spanish coast on a plate

One of the most satisfying moments of a holiday is when you stumble across a place to eat and never want the meal to end. Lunchtime stretches into early evening, coffee is followed by a digestif, then you reluctantly settle the bill and slowly make to leave. The blissful moment is enhanced if you wander along the beach only to find another place to transition from lunch to dinner. Such is the case on the Costa de Luz on Spain’s south-western coast, a place with wide, pale sand beaches backed by Spanish fir forests and more blue flags - 26 - than anywhere in Andalucía. It has traditionally been popular with Spanish families but remains below the radar for foreign visitors. But maybe not for much longer. According to our Cadiz-based writer Sorrel Downer, since the arrival of Aponiente, the restaurant of “el Chef del Mar” Ángel León, in the “faded” seaside town of El Puerto de Santa María, “there’s hardly a rickety table, plastic chair or €2.50 plate of fried dogfish to be found on this coast today". They have been replaced by "stylish beach bars with Balinese beds serving artfully presented Asian-influenced seafood” such as patatas bravas that are really red prawns, jamón that is really dried tuna, says Downer. It sounds like a place where lunch seamlessly rolls into dinner. Buen provecho!