Malaga's Los Patios de Beatas: innovative dishes and excellent wines

Enrique Bellver

Malaga

Monday, 22 July 2024, 10:37

Los Patios de Beatas was the first restaurant in the centre of Malaga to offer a wide variety of wines from the very beginning, and was even considered more of a wine bar than a restaurant in the most literal sense of the word. The passing of the years has proved Julián Sanjuán right and today you should come to this restaurant not only to enjoy more than 500 different wines, many of which are even served by the glass, but also for its cuisine and for the paired dishes and tastings that are prepared in the restaurant throughout the year.

Antonio Nájera has been at the helm of the kitchen for more than seven years now, assisted by Camilo Rojas, taking care of all the details so that the dishes on the menu have a real meaning and are in keeping with the basis of this establishment, that is, wine, because at Los Patios de Beatas everything revolves around the god Bacchus.

Here we find traditional cuisine, updated, designed to be conveniently paired with the wines on the menu. One of the attractions is precisely that diners can make their own wine pairings based on wines by the glass, which arrive at the table in optimum condition.

At Los Patios de Beatas you can always eat a set menu (65 euros) with two wine pairings (30 and 50 euros). But what really interests wine lovers most are the tastings that Julián periodically offers to customers and friends. The new menu that Antonio has prepared for the summer is not exempt from a certain boldness when it comes to combining in the same dish products that in themselves are very different from each other, but which, when properly executed, can be a wonderful surprise, such as the bluefin tuna cooked at low temperature, and which, when mixed with pickled vegetables in pickled al dente sauce, stands out for its strength of flavour and unctuousness, or the dessert where the avocado is transformed into an almost ethereal cream in the mouth, sweetened by a smooth, aged rum ice-cream.

Los Patios de Beatas is not a restaurant that will surprise gourmet palates, but it is a place where cuisine and wine share the limelight in a very honest way in terms of execution and at very reasonable prices.

Buñuelo de chivo

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This dough of the fried bun is very soft due to its lightness and in the centre is a piece of stewed goat. The most characteristic feature of this dish is that it is served in two parts, the bun and a consommé made with the goat meat.

Veal sweetbreads

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Antonio Nájera has chosen medium-sized veal sweetbreads for this dish so that they do not lose any of their juiciness when cooked over a flame. The black garlic sauce is the perfect way to give it a sweet touch.

Avocado cream

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An attractive dessert, not too sweet, but rather a dessert for those who don't have a sweet tooth. A smooth avocado cream accompanied by a light, aged rum ice cream with a slight saline touch provided by the roe.

Presa Ibérica al Oloroso

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The fat infiltrated from the pork contributes to the mellowness. The oloroso sherry is the factor that binds and unites the different ingredients, i.e, the meat and the almost caramelised celeriac, and their textures.