Best Restaurants In Cordoba, Spain november 29, 2021 – Posted in: Spain, Travel – Tags: Andalusia, Breweries, Cordoba, Food, Holiday, Restaurants, Reviews, Spain, Vacation

Find the best restaurants in Cordoba

Although Cordoba is somewhat smaller than Seville, the city offers a disproportionate number of really good restaurants and tapas bars, and it can therefore be difficult to choose.

As in all other cities, a few minutes of googling is well spent when you need to find a good restaurant, but there is also another solution: Head out into the city and eat where you end up. If you’re lost, the small bars frequented by the locals in the neighborhood, will always serve you a little quick and tasty tapa.

A few tips for eating well in Cordoba

In Cordoba you eat both well and inexpensive. Many of the dishes on the menu are tapas, which makes it easy to taste more than one thing. The portions are large and full, so be careful not to order too much food, and preferably only half portions, ½ racion. It’s also perfectly normal to ask for the menu again after the first few dishes.

In the beginning, we persistantly ordered way too much food, but on the very last night, we had learned our lesson and settled for three portions of tapas (for two adults). Together with two beers, it was €35, which is the general price level in the city. A larger dinner with wine costs around €70 for two. A good glass of wine or a bottle of beer costs about 3 euros.

Many restaurants in Cordoba do not open until 20:00 – and the locals go out at the earliest and eat from 20:30 to 21:00 and until 23:00. It makes good sense in a city that is very hot in the summer, so come through the day with a tapas or two and eat when darkness has fallen. Lunch is also served from 13:00 to 16:00.

The locals are always out on the town and it can be hard to get a table if you arrive at the same time. Book a table if there is a restaurant that you really want to eat at, both for lunch and dinner. Or do as we do: wait by the door as the restaurant opens, then you are almost always sure to get a seat.

About the recommendations for the restaurants in Cordoba

Before we take you to the best restaurants in Cordoba, however, we want to tell you a little about what dining experiences we usually go for – so you can decide if you want to follow our recommendations.

We love to eat well and restaurant visits are usually a big part of our vacations. We do not necessarily eat expensive, but always locally and with local ingredients. We are also always on the hunt for the great dining experiences and prefer to eat something we have never tasted before. What we did end up eating of local specialties, you can read about here: 10 things to eat in Cordoba. You can also use the mentioned article as a glossary when we start recommending dishes at the restaurants below.

We lived right by Av. del Gran Capitán, and from here we had only a five minute walk down to one of the popular bar and restaurant areas. However, many restaurants are located in the old town, La Juderia, as well as along the Guadalquivir River, from the Puente Romano bridge down to the large El Arcangel shopping center.

6 great restaurants in Cordoba

El Paseo

We’ll start with the best one first! El Paseo offers a traditional Cordoban cuisine with small tapas dishes. Located right at the noisy roundabout next to Puente Romano, we had passed the place several times, without stopping. But continously reading praises of the food, we had to give it a try. And we were not disappointed! El Paseo is the essence of Cordoba: simple and with absurdly good tapas, cheap and good service. As a minimum, you should definitely try their croquetas and berenjenas – it’s exquisite!

Casa Pepe de la Juderia

Casa Pepe de la Juderia is located right in the heart of the old Jewish quarter, La Juderia. The restaurant is an institution in Cordoba, where for almost 100 years it has served the most traditional dishes: salmorejo, mazamorra, arroz meloso de conejo and berenjenas. The small rooms of the restaurant are decorated in a classic style, and from the terrace you can enjoy the view of the Mezquito Cathedral.

TABERNA LA MONTILLANA

Taberna La Montillana goes in the exact opposite direction. The hip tapas bar offers all the classic dishes, but with a modern twist, and an impressive wine list. We ate, among other things, eggplant fritters with feta, small meat-filled pancakes with curry sauce and cochifrito, deep-fried iberico pigbelly cubes.

TABERNA SALINAS

Taberna Salinas is another restaurant in Cordoba that you just have to visit when you are in town. Here it’s all about booking a table, or arriving well in advance! We ate in the beautiful dining room under the glass dome, while noticing both small and large companies being seated in the adjoining salons – and just as many guests being turned away at the door. The menu is large, and it can be more than difficult to choose, so feel free to start with three dishes and then order some more afterwards.

We can recommend the beef tail stew, salmojero and as a whimsical but quite tasty surprise: bullion with meatball, in a beer glass. (It tasted way better than it sounds.) Feel free to ask the waiter to help selecting your food – they are used to tourists ordering too much food.

SOJO FUSION

For lunch, the locals like to meet by the river Guadalquvir, where the restaurants are located side by side. If you haven’t booked a table, then start at Puente Romano and head west until you find a place that has a vacant table. We can recommend the hip Sojo Fusion, which serves delicious tapas, and at the same time offers an impressive bar.

MORILES RIBERA

Next door lies the traditional Moriles Ribera, where we had lunch the next day. It was actually here we would have eaten when we first passed by, but the outdoor patio was filled to the brim with locals, which was why we ended up at Sojo Fusion. However, we were surprised that there was such a big difference in popularity, because the food is good in both places.

… and something for our next visit

Before we left, we did some research on the restaurants in Cordoba. A name that kept popping up was Garum 2.1, which was supposed to be the hippest tapas bar in town, a traditional Andalusian cuisine with a modern twist. We really would have liked to have eaten there, but unfortunately the restaurant was closed for the holidays while we visited Cordoba – but then luckily we have an excuse to come again!

Great bars in Cordoba

Let’s start by saying that it’s a really bad idea to go on pub crawl in Cordoba – there simply are too many bars! A good place to start the evening though is at Av. del Gran Capitán, where there is life all day and especially in the evening. Another popular hang-out place is also the Mercado Victoria, food market, restaurant and disco, all in one place. You shouldn’t go there for the great culinary experiences, but it is a pretty fun place to party.

Finally, we can not recommend the craft beer bar CEPA enough. The stylish decor is more reminiscent of a wine bar than an underground craft beer bar, and especially the bartender’s extensive knowledge of both the large selection of Spanish and also foreign craft beer made it a truly unique experience. The bar also offers small but exquisite tapas dishes and a really good Iberco ham.

More tips for your holiday in Cordoba

Find a hotel in Cordoba

There are many good hotels in Cordoba, and especially the old town is popular with tourists. So where are you going to live? On Booking.com you can see the large selection of hotels in Cordoba, and below you can also read our recommendation for a nice and affordable hotel. You can also perform your own search on Booking.com for a good hotel in Cordoba right here:

Booking.com

A recommendation: HOTEL CORDOBA CENTER

We stayed at the Hotel Cordoba Center, which is located a 10 minutes walk from the train station. We had booked a standard double room, but never have we had so much space! When we arrived, there was a bottle of sparkling wine ready for us in the room, and it fit very well with the general impression that it was primarily couples and business people who checked in here. At least we did not see any children in the hotel during our stay.

The breakfast buffet was gigantic and with everything the you could possibly want: bacon and eggs, local specialties, pastries and excellent coffee. At the top of the hotel there is a pool and a bar overlooking the city, and in the lobby there is another bar. We can’t say anything about them, since the hotel is only a five minute walk from the start of the center and Av. del Gran Capitán, which offers plenty of bars and restaurants. From the hotel and to the ancient Roman bridge it is a 25 minutes walk.

In November 2021, we payed just around €80 pr. night for a double room with breakfast at Hotel Cordoba Center.

How to you get to Cordoba?

The easiest way to get to Cordoba is by landing at the airport in either Malaga or Seville. We flew out to Malaga and took the train to Cordoba, which takes an hour. Here are the directions from traveling between Malaga and Cordoba:

From Malaga Airport, take the train to Malaga Train Station, Estación de Málaga María Zambrano. At the station, you have to buy your tickets at the ticket office (Renfe), where you must also show your passport before taking your luggage through the security check at the entrance to the platforms. In November 2021, it was €30 from Malaga to Cordoba and slightly less from Cordoba to Seville. It is not possible to buy food or drink on the train.

We had six wonderful nights in Cordoba before boarding the train onwards to Seville, from where we had our flight home. The train journey between Cordoba and Seville takes about 45 minutes. There are both trains and airport buses between Seville city center and the airport, but we had to leave early in the morning, so we chose to take a taxi.

Read the other articles about Cordoba here!