Review of La Paloma
This place was a real find, the kind of eaterie that makes you feel all smug about living nearby. If it were in the UK, you'd struggle to get in to the place at any time. As it is, apparently Sunday lunch is the real big one, where you ought to call and book in advance in order to ensure a table.
We went on a weekday evening. Situated a couple of kilometres out of Estepona on the Casares road (you head up out of town through the poligono, under the motorway towards the municipal park), La Paloma enjoys lovely views of the mountain and has an outside area to up its capacity and allow enjoyment of the campo — not that we either saw the terrace or the mountain, it being dark and late October.
The place resembles, to all intents and purposes, a gastropub. It has a relaxed front half off a spacious entrance hall, which boasts a well bedded-in bar across one wall and a sprinkling of pub-style tables and relaxing sofas. We had a glass of wine here while our (English) hosts brough the specials board over and showed us the menus. Indeed, we ordered from the bar and were shown through to our table in the back a short while later. The back half is a bit more conservatory like, a medium-sized dining room which, as I say, has the feel of an upmarket UK pub.
We started with the homemade asparagus soup and some salmon and spinach fishcakes. Immediately the top-notch bread (brown and white) came, we knew we were in for a treat. The starters confirmed this. The soup was creamy, lightly herbed and spanking fresh, with a sprinkling of croutons to finish it off. The fishcakes were, in the words of her who knows, "the best fishcakes I have ever tasted." She doesn't exaggerate about these things. Try those fishcakes.
For mains, I went for a dish from the specials board, belly pork with crackling on a bed of dauphinoise potatoes. Generously presented on an oversized plate, it was an absolutely triumph. The crackling was light and crisp, the fat wobbly and abundant, the meat so tender it hardly managed to hold its own with a fork through it. With a dollop of apple sauce, this was true British cooking and it blew me away. Alongside some simple steamed broccoli and green beans on the side to share, it was highly memorable.
My wife chose the braised lamb shank with crushed minted potatoes. Now a good lamb shank isn't too hard to do to be fair — slow, slow, slow in the oven and enough tasty stock to braise it to within an inch of collapse without steaming all the flavour out — but to do it well is still something to celebrate. And this tasty specimen, delivered again in a generous portion on an oversized plate, was done well. Alongside it was a small dish of fresh mint sauce, and again it was one to remember. True comfort food.
There was no "should we, shouldn't we" moment about the desserts. We were having them. I went for a steamed toffee pudding, my wife chose treacle tart. The treacle tart first: Beautiful pastry, plainly homemade treacle, and the kind of caramelised gooey edges that you dream about and then wake up with a feeling of sublime foody contentment but not known why, having forgotten any trace of "treacle" or "tart" from your waking mind. Have it and remember it! And the sticky toffee pudding was neither oversticky nor overpoweringly toffee-like, rather an exquisitely textured square of sweet sponge made with some kind of non-white flour that gave it the most moreish appeal of any dessert I've had in months.
A decent coffee machine would be a good addition for this place, but apart from that, we really couldn't find fault. With three full courses, a bottle of wine and a drink in the bar before, the bill was a good value EUR 75 (of which we only paid half and have to run the rest up to them later, due to the credit card machine being Telefonica'd).
La Paloma is a precious find indeed, and the kind of restaurant we will be visiting, and visiting, and visiting. Can't wait to try the Sunday lunches.
Address and telephone
Camino Los Pedregales, Estepona. Telephone: 952 79 46 06
