Ride Off Into The Sunset, Cowgirl!

My friends and I have one thing in common and that's a love of good food!

A few years back we found ourselves searching for some dinner in the Spanish town of Nerja - Three days of icecream lunches and sangria had left us hungry for proper grub! After an hour of traipsing the remote sandy streets, we discovered a old rickety shack underneath a highway. It was a place we could have easily overlooked, and clearly everyone else had as the picnic chairs and tables outside were all empty, but there was a warm glow coming from inside so we stopped and knocked on the door. A smiley local couple poked their heads out of the shack window. When we asked (in an embarrassing mix of Spanglish) where the nearest restaurant was, they chuckled to themselves. The man came outside, pulled back some chairs and said: "You eat here!"

So we sat down, partially out of politeness, partially out of exhaustion. Had we accidentally walked into someone's back garden? Were we being accosted?!

The woman put on some twinkly music and asked us what kinds of things we liked to eat, making a long list on her hand before disappearing into the shack. Twenty minutes later she and her husband reappeared and filled our table with the most amazing tapas I have ever seen or tasted. Tiny fishes stuffed with herbs and spices, pan-fried string beans, succulent seafood. Traditional family dishes perfected over generations. And the plates kept coming and coming! The woman even went out to buy some more eggs so she could make us a cake!

The language barrier prevented us from telling that lovely Spanish couple just how wonderful their food actually was, but we did give them a hug! (We like to hug nice people.) Their tiny road-side restaurant could have rivalled any fancy schmancy eatery in London and I still can't believe there wasn't a line of people queuing down the street for a table. We were so bowled over by the experience that we paid five times what we were billed. We had to. Sometimes I think I dreamt that meal. If we'd have gone back the next day to find the shack had disappeared, I wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest. It felt like our very own magical pop up restaurant!

The place still fondly holds the number one spot on my top ten list of amazing places to eat in the world and I don't even think it has a name!