On a bright September morning, the La Viña neighbourhood of Cádiz city is buzzing with life. Old gents in berets play dominoes in neon-lit cafes where flamenco music blares from the radio. Housewives toting the weekly shop chew the fat with neighbours while their kids run riot on the street. All along
Calle Palma the bars are setting out tables in the shade of palms and orange trees. I pick one at random and duck inside for a snifter of manzanilla sherry, bracingly fresh, along with a morsel of fish that comes sizzling straight from the fryer.

Southern Europe doesn’t get much more southerly than Cádiz. I don’t only mean in geographical terms – this province of Andalucía hangs off the lower edge of Spain, seeming to reach out to Africa before pulling back at the last minute – but in cultural and culinary ones too. Cádiz turns the relaxed, informal Spanish lifestyle into a fine art. The region’s food culture turns on a handful of stellar ingredients, a world-class wine, and a custom that ought to be protected under the UNESCO World Heritage scheme (and would be, if Spain got its way): the lazy, grazy tapas crawl.

The province has a diversity of landscapes, ranging from the peaks of Grazalema, where generous rainfall keeps the landscape strikingly green; to the long necklace of wild beaches studded with coastal towns, from pretty Sanlúcar de Barrameda (home of manzanilla sherry) to salt-of-the-earth Barbate, Zahara de los Atunes and surf-mad Tarifa in the far south.

Where to kick off your food journey? Perhaps in Cádiz itself, the historic capital – salty, vibrant and big-hearted, jutting out like a fortress into the Atlantic Ocean.

The city’s old Mercado Central, housed in a magnificent 18th-century building right in the centre of town, is where to go for a crash-course in gaditano produce. Here you’ll find all the big local guns: the superlative fish and shellfish landed in nearby ports; the beef from the Retinta breed, its dense dark meat marbled with
fat; and vegetables from the rich arable land behind the coast. Not forgetting peerless regional delicacies such as mojama (air-dried tuna, often served in slices with toasted almonds), payoyo goat’s cheese from the Grazalema hills, or pine nuts from the forests behind Barbate.

Then it’s out into the streets, where the midday aperitif round is just beginning. The bars of Cádiz are an ecosystem in which neighbourhood drop-ins, harbourside boozers, historic taverns and chic gastrobars happily coexist. You’ll quickly begin to recognise the set-in-stone local tapas repertoire, which includes
such popular items as tortillitas de camarones (shrimp fritters splotched on a hot griddle), papas aliñás (potatoes in an olive oil and parsley vinaigrette) and cazón en adobo (tender chunks of dogfish steeped in a vinegar and cumin marinade and fried in light batter). At Casa Manteca, a creaky old tavern in La Viña with
beamed ceilings and strip lighting, the house speciality is chicharrones: cured pork belly presented in wafer-thin slices on old-fashioned waxed paper. At Freiduría Las Flores, on a little square near the market, it’s pescaíto frito, the region’s signature dish of mixed fish dredged in wheat and chickpea flour, then fried to a delicate crispness. (Cádiz in general is a place that really knows how to fry.) All this deliciousness comes, inevitably, with a bag of picos, a bread-stick nibble it’s easy to become addicted to.

Afterwards, you might head south out of the city towards Vejer de la Frontera, a gorgeous whitewashed town on a hill above the sea. Latterly Vejer has emerged from its beauty-sleep to become something of a gourmet destination. Expatriate Scot Annie Manson runs Spanish cookery courses in the kitchen of her patio house at the top of the town, and leads scrumptious food tours the length and breadth of Cádiz province, with plenty of cold fino and manzanilla sherry to be guzzled along the way. Irrepressible Annie shepherds her clients to her favourite foodie addresses in Vejer (don’t miss butcher Paco Melero, whose manteca colorá, a pork paté made with ibérico lard and pimentón, is fêted all over the
province). Annie is also a mine of information about the region’s finest ingredients. Of which there is none finer than tuna.

Atún rojo, blue-fin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), is a pillar of Cádiz’s gastronomic life. It pops up regularly on menus around the province (Restaurante Casa Varo in Vejer is a notable specialist) but the heart of tuna culture is Barbate. This rough-and-ready harbour town is famous for its almadraba, a complex installation of fishing nets invented by medieval Arabs which traps the giant tuna as they make their way to the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar. The cult of almadraba-caught tuna has its cathedral in the legendary El Campero in Barbate, where José Melero’s menu is a celebration of atún rojo using every conceivable part of the fish – the sirloin raw in sashimi or simmered with onions, the cheeks in pine-nut sauce, the ribs char-grilled on the barbecue.

Restaurant cooking in the haute sense has never been a big deal in this part of the world. Increasingly, however, there are exceptions. The reputation of Cádiz cuisine had a major boost when Aponiente received a third Michelin star under chef Angel León, making his the only restaurant in Andalucía to be so honoured. A ferry ride from Cádiz harbour in León’s hometown of El Puerto de Santa Maria, Aponiente has grown into a pilgrimage site for Michelin mavens from all over the world. And rightly so: León (aka El Chef del Mar, ‘the sea chef’) was a champion of sustainable fishing before it was fashionable, and uses often humble sea-sourced ingredients in thrillingly adventurous ways. The locale alone is worth the detour: in 2015 León moved his restaurant from a modest space in town to a spectacular new setting, a 19th-century ‘tide mill’ like a great stone barn on the water’s edge. Not the least impressive aspect of Aponiente is its 1,600-strong wine list, which is a treasure-house of rare and precious local wines.

Which brings us to sherry. An unmissable stop on any gastro-safari around these parts would have to be the city of Jerez de la Frontera. Jerez is a bustling, handsome place and a seriously under-visited Andalucían jewel, its whitewashed squares and cobbled streets as romantic as Seville but without the crowds. It’s also one of the few world cities whose name is synonymous with a great wine. Sherry has come a long way since the days when it was scorned as granny’s favourite tipple and dusty bottles of Bristol Cream might spend years at the back of the drinks cabinet.

Sure, there’s a reek of history in Jerez’s many bodegas (none more venerable than Gonzalez-Byass, maker of the iconic fino Tio Pepe) where blackened barrels are stacked high in echoing cellars. But these days the wine is highly esteemed for its exhilarating flavours – the yeasty, saline tang of a good fino, or the intensity of an old amontillado with its aromas of walnuts, woodsmoke and dried orange peel. What’s more, the latest wave of unfortified table wines from the Palomino grape, mostly hailing from small independent wineries, is evidence of a new dynamism shaking up the snoozy world of sherry.

At a tavern in old-town Jerez, the fino is flowing freely. Outside on the terrace, the little square echoes with the amiable racket of local folk who know a good time when they see it. Waiters in black waistcoats weave deftly among the tables bearing tin platters of mojama, tortillitas de camarones, lambs’ kidneys casseroled in sherry… “And what would señor like to eat today?” A plate of tempura-crisp pescaíto frito? A little Payoyo cheese with a bone-dry oloroso on the side? A bowl of tiny clams in a garlicky broth? Yes, yes, and yes. Cádiz not only knows how to whet your appetite – it also does a great job of satisfying it.

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