Food and Drink

Cútar pays tribute to its origins with its first Andalusian gastronomy day

The Axarquía village's I Jornada de Gastronomía Andalusí is taking place on Friday 29 May and will feature panel discussions and live cooking demonstrations, among other activities

Poster announcing the initiative in Cútar.

Málaga

28/05/2026 a las 11:27h.

The village of Cútar in Malaga province's Axarquía area is set to pay tribute to its past through food on Friday, 29 May, with ... the launch of the Jornada de Gastronomía Andalusí (Andalusian gastronomy day), which will be held for the first time. The idea behind the initiative is to consider food as a cultural and historical heritage, scientific knowledge and a way of bringing people together through traditional recipes.

The event will start at 6pm in the multi-purpose hall in Calle Saucos, with the participation of the mayor of Cútar, Francisco Javier Ruiz Mérida, the lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Murcia, Pilar Garrido Clemente and the Arabist and scientific coordinator Pedro Rojo Pérez.

A roundtable on the cuisine of Al-Andalus: the legacy that is tasted will be held, moderated by Pilar Garrido Clemente. The meeting will bring together three leading specialists who will address different perspectives of the Andalusian culinary tradition and its contemporary projection.

Historian Fernando Rueda García, member of the Royal Academy of Noble Arts of Antequera and president of Gastroarte, will open the talks with a presentation entitled 'Andalusian cuisine according to two Almohad recipe books. Some dishes for its continuity', in which he will analyse ancient culinary manuscripts as a source for the recovery of historical recipes.

Dinner

Next, the chef and academic Natividad Aznar Martínez, head of El Ventorrillo restaurant in Murcia and member of the Royal Andalusian Academy of Gastronomy and Wine, will present 'Al Bustán: the traces of Al-Andalus in the cuisine of Murcia', a look at the permanence of this heritage in the gastronomic tradition of south-eastern Spain.

Felipe Vidales, historian of the Institute of Gastronomic Culture of Castilla-La Mancha, will close the talks with the lecture "We are what we eat (and what we have stopped eating). A journey from the Axarquía to Toledo through the complexes and contradictions of the Andalusian and Moorish gastronomic heritage", a reflection on the continuities, losses and reinterpretations of the Hispano-Muslim food heritage.

The day will continue at 8.30pm with a cooking demonstration at the Dar al-Yayyar restaurant under the title 'eating like a sultan', conceived as a tribute to Professor Daniel Newman, one of the greatest international specialists in medieval Arab gastronomy.

The demonstration will be given by the chefs José Manuel Marfil Morales and Saloua Mazouz Sellourmi, owners of the restaurant, with historical and cultural contextualisation by Pedro Rojo Pérez, coordinator of the project Limón wa sukkar: gastro-andalusi connections.

The Dar al-Yayyar restaurant will present the Dar al-Yayyar 2.0 gastronomic menu-experience, a menu that will allow participants to sample a contemporary reinterpretation of some recipes inspired by Al-Andalus.