Luckily their neighbours are an excellent spot for tapas and drinks in a perfect setting with a great terrace. It´s that large corner cafe even closer to us. It´s run by extremely friendly and service minded people who do an excellent job. A very pleasant atmosphere and people who deserve our support as they worked very hard to get where they are now.
Rossini will no doubt find a new owner, but luckily there are ample bars if you walk a bit further down. Personally we rarely visit this small strip of worn down bars and restaurants at the street side. Most of them are a bit depressing and they rarely stick.
Except for the excellent fish restaurant at the left (not the one at the beach but at the opposite of the street) we don´t have many great spots. This one is an exception: it´s usually fully booked for the evening and people visit this from very far due to their well known quality. Top notch. Not as good as El Higueron, but close.
Good restaurants are usually the Spanish ones. We had a funny experience with the Casa Con Tiki restaurant as we used to visit that in the past when it was Spanish owned and one of the better ones in that tourist street. So we settled down with friends to show off and were met with a blank glaze when we tried to order something. It took quite a while before we understood they no longer were owned by the Spanish owners but were taken over by an English one. He had hired staff who didn´t speak a word of Spanish!
The food we got was horrendous: clearly made by people who had never cooked before, but hopefully they now have some experience. As we don´t fancy fish and chips, nor steaks with free bottles of wine which are usually a tell tale sign of bad meat, we haven´t been back. In that same street though, at the far end, at the T-crossing is a new restaurant with a Hungarian owner. They serve traditional spanish food, but also a very good goulash soup, some specialties from Hungary and an excellent mixed grill. Prices are extremely low and the service is far above the average in that tourist trap. Recommended.
Another excellent addition is Malahambra (pretty sure I write it wrong), which is on the square next to the comfortel. People are queing there to eat. It´s so wildly popular that you get a number and they work shifts the whole evening. Prices are low in the view of the excellent food. The kitchen is difficult to describe as it´s a mix of tapas, smalll plates etc all originally made for this restaurant chain. Don´t try to eat there on a Frday evening unless you have all the time in the world OR eat very early and beat the Spanish visitors.
After six years in Spain we know a lot of great little restaurants but usually they are not on the sea side, have spanish food in which they excel and from what we understood is this not always to the liking of the typical forum visitor. Prices are fine though and we see more foreigners who know Fuengirola well there so we are definitely not the only one.
Maybe we should put a thread for good Spanish food as we know lots of clients ask for these places. On average though there is only a very small set of people reading here. We have tried to stimulate them to visit but they don´t find the kind of information they are looking for and don´t feel at home in these settings.
Max.