They really love their long names in Spain. Officially on Google its “La Cosmopolita Malagueña | Dani Carnero | Restaurant in Malaga”. After getting a strong worded letter from Google about the name and use of special characters they decided to shorten their next project to “La Cosmo Malagueña | Dani Carnero | Restaurant in Malaga”. Yes, these are two different restaurants in the heart of Malaga’s vivacious center, and I sampled one of them. The long one. It was so good, I just had to come back the next day. Well, sort of…
Malaga’s center will make you cancel all museums, castles, cathedral, anything involved walking uphill, and beach plans. Especially if this is your last leg of a long trip. Its a maze of cuteness. The architecture, the shops, the scene, the art, the fashion, will make you want to walk and rewalk the same streets just in case you missed something. Exploring other neighborhoods like Soho was interesting but felt like a waste of time for us tourists. Note to the Urban planners of the world: Unless you have a street named Houston, stop calling your neighborhoods Soho and Noho. Its getting old, and silly.
La Cosmopolita could not have been in a more touristy area. Its entirely surrounded by Tapas Bars and all sorts of other food options. For the casual diners who dont necessarily need to have the best Ajoblanco in the city, but just want to sit down somewhere and people watch, there are options galore. But for the rest of us freaks who derive much of the pleasure from months of research, you want to check out La Cosmopolita, and its Michelin approved sisters. While not every dish worked, the ones that did more than made up for it.
Lets start with the one clear dud. Crab omelette. Reviewers made this a must get, and since I love crab and everything egg, I just had to sample it. But it just didnt work for us, especially while smothered with that crab sauce. The profile flavors of fishy seafood and eggs in general should not be combined, unless you posses the creativity to make it work.
Moving on to the hits. Mollete de Atún, one of their specialties is like the best raw tuna sandwich you’ll ever find. Mollete translates to a muffin (like an English Muffin I suppose), but its actually IGP protected buns from Antequera. Its a glorious, well balanced combination. Another hit, perhaps the big one came in the form of steak tartare. Pure joy with every morsel. I dont recall eating tartare this good even in Paris recently.
The Tuna, Cadiz style, comes like a stew with onions was serviceable. Not something I’d order again, but I do like this style which we enjoyed numerous times on this trip. Payoya cheesecake to finish off was sensational. One of the better cheesecakes of the trip (we had quite a bit). Love that funk from the Payoya goat cheese. Didnt try more, since some of the us got sick and stayed in the hotel room. So it was an impromptu date between Mrs Z and I on our first evening in Malaga.
But that’s not the end of the story. This was by far our favorite staff of the trip. Not due to their over the top professionalism, but goofiness. From the waiter that decided to grab my phone to take a better picture (he didnt), to the British woman, and the chubby jokester who brings the Panna Cotta to the table next to us while shaking it to show how it jiggles, its the type of dysfunctional family you want every restaurant to have. By the end of all this (span of two days) the chubby waiter hugged me more than Mrs Z hugged me all year. TMI? Not really.
Why did I go there again the next day you may be asking. Not to eat. When Mr Chubby (we were having so much fun that we forgot to formally introduce each other) learned where I was from, he replied “Oh, our chef is from NYC. He used to own a restaurant called Da Andrea”, 😲😲😲. “but he’s not here today. Come back tomorrow”. If you’ve been following me for a long time, you’d know that Da Andrea used to be my favorite restaurant in NYC years ago. I spent birthdays there, among other functions. I was introduced to proper Italian food, and even some of my favorite wine at Da Andrea. But I never really knew the owners, who apparently sold Da Andrea not too long ago. Needless to say coming back the next day and conversing with the man, the legend was a trip highlight.
Eating With Ziggy 