Like many restaurants that have survived Covid, the Cuevita has scaled back its menu significantly. It cuts costs and reduces wastage. The night’s offerings are now written on a blackboard – eight or so starters and a similar number of main courses. It’s still the essence of how I think of traditional Spanish cuisine – take good ingredients and cook them simply.
There’s thick slices of a really tasty bread and aioli to dunk it in. For starters, there were cod croquettes – flavoursome fish mixed with a good béchamel sauce in a crisp coating. And king prawns served it hot oil with chilli and garlic – in other parts of Spain, you’ll see this as “gambas pil-pil”.
A sea bass main course was just that, apart from a few Canarian potatoes. A whole fish, cut in half and simply grilled. A squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of parsley helped it along. This was a perfect bit of fish cooking and the simplicity let the flavour of the bass come through.
Tuna belly was the other main. Perhaps the tastiest bit of the fish, this one was also simply cooked. As is my general experience in Spain, it’s cooked to “medium” –none of the “just seared” stuff. That came with steamed vegetables and Canarian potatoes, with the usual mojo sauces – the spiky red one worked nicely.
Neither of us fancied dessert or coffee. No doubt, we’ll be back next trip (hopefully, they’ll have local rabbit on the blackboard then).
