Traveling through southern Spain basically means stringing small towns together. After Seville, we picked Málaga and Granada as destinations, since public transport there is relatively convenient.
Beyond wandering clean little alleys with plenty of regional character, stopping by Picasso’s birthplace, or feeling that layered sense of history between the Islamic palaces and city walls, there’s one more thing hard to ignore along the southern coast: the seafood looks far too tempting.
Marisquería Los Marinos Jose was the one that gave us a total surprise.
The restaurant is in Fuengirola, a very typical and well-known seaside town. We’d wandered Málaga’s beautiful old town in the morning, and arrived here right around lunchtime, the beach and sea offering a different kind of ease.
The restaurant’s location is practically “hugging the sea” — right on the seafront promenade, with Carvajal Beach right outside the door.
The reason we zeroed in on this place was simple too — the ingredients just looked fresh. A seafood display packed to the brim, small seafood pieces gleaming with translucent shine — even the offhand photos in the Google Maps reviews were tempting enough on their own.
As for the restaurant’s background, it grew out of that classic, simple Spanish family-restaurant framework — the family had its own fishing boat, going out to sea every day, and eventually opened a restaurant too. Keeping the source in their own hands, ingredients going straight from the sea to the kitchen, the same way for 30 years running.
The seasoning aims for extreme simplicity, often not even needing a sauce. Whatever can be eaten raw gets its freshness lifted out with just olive oil and salt. Whatever needs heat is handed over to the griddle, the frying pan, or charcoal.
Simple, but with real confidence behind it.
You order directly at the seafood counter, seeing what’s fresh that day, with the cooking method recommended by the restaurant. “The sweet shrimp are best eaten raw, the langoustine and red carabineros can just be lightly grilled.”
Small sweet shrimp sitting in rows, steeped in olive oil, eaten purely with eyes closed — a clean sweetness, the meat firm. That slight stickiness slowly spreads through the mouth, yet isn’t the least bit heavy — if anything, it gets more luminous the more you chew.
The other two were even purer, needing almost nothing but lemon. The sea urchin’s grains weren’t large, but the flavor was concentrated. The oysters were plump at just the right point, the sweetness lingering the instant you bit in, a full mineral quality alongside it, with almost no off-flavor at all.
Massive, super-plump razor clams were piled generously across the whole plate, chasing no visual flourish at all — just pure aroma.
Give it a light tug, and a big, plump piece slides right out. Crisp, tender, and fresh to eat, with the part closest to the pan carrying a faint golden char, the fat making the meat taste even sweeter.
The large clams, after precise handling, aimed for refinement — a sweet flavor melting through the mouth.
The langoustine arrived at the table with a strong charcoal aroma, carrying the clean sea flavor forced out of the shell by the high heat.
Eating the head first, the sweetness was highly concentrated, almost a flowing texture. The meat still had a bit of translucence, glossy like a pearl, extremely tender on entry, the sweetness direct. Cracking open the claw was, surprisingly, even juicier — the meat fresher, the sweetness still completely unhidden.
The overall sea flavor was clean and concentrated, the char from cooking wrapped politely and with real restraint around the outside, never once masking the ingredient’s own flavor.
The other portion of red carabineros — the moment it hit the table, the first thing you noticed was a clear sweetness. The shell’s aroma mixed with the sea flavor, start to finish a display of highly concentrated shrimp flavor.
For the fish course, we picked red mullet from the display case, and were surprised the restaurant simply fried this kind of “small fish” outright.
The fish head was fried to extreme crispness, delivering a crackling sound on the first bite, with a touch of gelatinous stickiness around the bones, the aroma full. The fish body’s flesh was clearly sweet, solid chunks of fresh meat, more flavorful the more you chewed. By the tail section, the thin flesh clung to the crispy skin, coming across even crisper and more fragrant.
A bit shocking, honestly — taking something stereotyped as “fast food” fried fare and giving it detail and layers, frying a small fish into something practically fine dining, with its own sense of choreography.
Oh, and don’t forget — the restaurant’s champagne list is genuinely something. You have to order a bottle here.
Two hours’ drive from Málaga is Granada, home to the Alhambra — another town with history, character, and seafood too.
Lunch was set at bar FM, considered one of the top technically-driven seafood taverns in this town. Overall it was good, but compared to Marisquería Los Marinos Jose, it honestly felt a little unfair to the comparison.
In Granada, a city with no coastline, bar FM’s ingredients are widely recognized. It’s better at the small seafood side of things — fry up some fresh anchovies, baby cuttlefish, and clams, and be sure to use bread to soak up every drop of that broth. As for tapas, the city has too many places already, so it’s worth leaving a little room for further exploring.
Also, the restaurant’s quisquillas (small shrimp) are famous — but you absolutely have to book ahead, or you’ll show up to nothing.
In the same city, Bar Las Diamantes is a completely different kind of expression. That kind of popularity feels like the roadside cold-noodle-pancake stall outside school gates after class — a bit rough around the edges, yet impossible to resist for its buzz.
A small shop that pulls its shutter up right on time, and by 1:02 already had 40 people crammed in. There were even families here with several kids, the little ones sitting at the table drinking cola while the adults gathered around ordering beer. Surprisingly, facing “outsiders” earnestly trying to understand the local culture, everyone showed warmth and openness, helping us order, passing dishes, calling things out.
Granada’s custom is: order a drink, get free tapas. But when a whole plate of freshly fried anchovies came out, it still hit us — “this whole pile is a free gift with a €3 glass of white wine…?” Fragrant, crisp, rich — not one bit behind the plate we’d ordered at bar FM.
But the real star was the fried calamari rings — genuinely super tender, an extremely thin batter coating the outside, the meat plump yet crisp-tender at the same time — this was, honestly, the best fried calamari of my life 🦑.
Fried food is sinful, sure. But sometimes you think — if every single fried small fish or fried squid you eat in life could have this exact texture, putting in a bit more effort on the treadmill would be worth it.
Of course, beyond the fried items, we’d suggest ordering everything else in moderation — under the crowded, line-up-required conditions, it does feel a bit thrown-together.
As for Granada — save the daytime for history and the beautiful big clouds, and dinner is when the crowds really come alive.
La Tana was an unexpected find, a genuine treasure. Over 100 by-the-glass options, nearly 2,000 bottles in the cellar, named Spain’s best bar in 2020 — this genuinely exceeded what you’d expect from a tourist-city experience.
The by-the-glass list is full of century-spanning selections, and the big wine list on the iPad has some genuinely mouth-watering bottles for sale. Come here with a drinking buddy, for sure.
Next time, we’ll absolutely have to come back south to see the handsome pigeons and gulls again!