A lot of people visit countries for the culture. For the history, for the ancient building, for the art. Other visit places for the nature, the waterfalls, the oceans, or the botanics. The combo of everything is just always the best. A bit of city, a bit of outdoors.
And ow yeah, I visit places to try out the food. There is always so much to discover in other countries outside of potato Holland. And apart from that you can also see a lot from the styles of eating in other countries.
On of the things I really like about the Spanish kitchen is the tapas style of eating. Small plates, small bites and adding along when it turns out you are more or less hungry than you initially thought. Not going for the starters and main course (desserts I hardly ever take), but let's face it...If you would ask me I would only order starters if I had the choice. The more different types of dishes, the better.
So this tapas stayle of eating suits me perfectly. And the convenient position of Spain next to the ocean just gives an awesome option of getting fresh fish and seafood caught not too far away. How fresh do you want it?
What is also something very different is the time of day for eating in Spain. In Holland, a typical normal household would eat somewhere around 1800 in the evening, and if you go out for dinner 1900 is normally the time to be somewhere.
In Malaga often it was only an option to enter the building from 2030 or even later. Talk about a different kind of schedule, but actually not a bad one!
The good thing about eating so late in the evening is that you don't even want these gigantic portions anymore, and tapas style suits it perfectly. Also this means you go for dinner, chill a bit and go home. No need for hitting the bar afterwards, the dinner was the perfect social time already.
Back to the food. As said Malaga has a really cool amount of restaurants which are often very small and cosy (which also means getting a table can be challenging). But on the other hand it also means it doesn't that much where you end up, because there are so many good places to find in the old town. Just wonder around for a bit in the small streets and you will find a place where you want to chill at for sure.
My advice would be to stay away from the harbour area for food, but just go to these small places in the city even though your instincts want you to sit near the water.
Pricewise I was extremely surpised in a postive matter. The beautiful dishes are often cheaper than 8-10 euros per dish and that means you really can experiment a bit with what you would want. Also a glass of local wine (which are really decent in this region) is done for like $3 per glass which is extremely cheap compared to Northern European countries where a glass of wine is often around $8 at the moment (damn inflation).
So are we here for the fish? Heck yeah we are! With a broad selection of lots of cod, clamps, ceviche, tuna, monkfish and whatever there was to find I can say that the hunt for awesome food in Malaga was a true success.