If you follow my blog, you will know we had a trip up to Murcia a couple of Saturdays ago. We crammed some shopping in, but more important than shopping is of course, eating and drinking! Murcia for us is pretty much undiscovered, and as Spain’s 10th largest city, there is quite a lot to discover both culturally and cuisine wise. As we were in one of the familiar parts to us, i.e. around the Cathedral and old town, we went for the third time to our favourite restaurant, La Parranda.
La Parranda restaurant frontage
We first discovered it about 5 years ago when we stayed overnight on our way to Valencia for a little city break. We could see La Parranda from our hotel bedroom window in the Plaza San Juan amongst several other rather marvellous looking places.
The are about 4 or 5 and I would be happy to go into any one of them – they have tables outside with patio heaters in the winter time and fabulous displays of trugs or glass vases containing vast amounts of tomatoes or aubergines – they are quite stunning.
Outside eating area - beautiful in Spring and Summer
Anyhow, the thing about La Parranda is that when you order your first drink, you are treated to a bowl of big fat olives along with the biggest potato crisps you have ever seen in your life, and we loved this gem of extravagant bar snacks that we just feel the need to go there on every trip. I think La Parranda comes from the verb Parrandearse, to go out on the town but I could be wrong! Cheap it is not, but sophisticated it is, and we are not talking London prices either.
Olives and big crisps
We decided to stay at the bar, on high stools and around tall round tables, and order from the tapas and racion menu (Racion is a more substantial portion than a tapa, and often enough for two or three of you to share). We had boquerones (anchovies) on toast, peppers stuffed with salt cod, morcilla (black pudding), grilled pork loin in tiny baguettes, meltingly tender, a huge salad of the most delicious green tomatoes that you get here, with hearts of palm – I can’t remember whether we had anything else to eat, but the menu is pretty vast just in the bar area.
One of the tempting salads
With a few drinks the bill came to 50 euros with a tip for three of us – I imagine it would be double the price in London. Each time I eat really authentic and posh Spanish food, it inspires me to get out my Spanish cook books and be a bit more inventive rather than sticking to the things I know and am confident cooking.
Next time we are in this area of Murcia, though, I think we have to have a drink and a snack in each of the other restaurants in Plaza Juan – they all look worthy of a peak inside.
La Parranda telephone number: 968 220 675
Yummy Almeria 
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