The place
A bar, a dining room, a wine corner and a square.
La Palma is four places in one, and all four are the same: the bar it has always been, the dining room for celebrations, the wine corner with its high tables and the terrace on Plaza del Huevo.
01Calle Terraza, 57
The bar
The first to open and the last to close. This is where breakfast is eaten standing up, with the bocadillo de carne mechá and a coffee people talk about beyond Estepona, where you leaf through someone else’s paper and argue about football and the fish market. The high tables are for a drink the way it is had here: in a group, never quite sitting down, with a beer and something off the grill. At the head, Víctor, Francisco and Valentín: years of knowing what you will order before you do.
02Calle Terraza, 57
The dining room
Linen tablecloths and lamps made from glass buoys and wicker fish traps, the same ones that brought fish out of this coast for centuries. The day’s menu handwritten on the wall. An air-conditioned dining room with space for a long Sunday lunch, a business lunch and a whole communion party. It is the part of La Palma that ends up in family photos.
03Calle Terraza, 57
The wine corner
A corner of high tables and stools by the wine cabinet, with a fishing net hanging and a watercolour of the sea on the wall. It is the place for the midday beer, the fino before lunch and the bottle opened unhurriedly in the afternoon. Drinks are had standing, or nearly, as they always have been here: in a group, with something off the grill in the middle.
04Calle Terraza, 57
The terrace
Plaza Antonia Guerrero, which nobody in Estepona calls by that name: it is Plaza del Huevo. The tables are out there, in the middle of life, with the car park a step away and calle Terraza, now pedestrian, opening up ahead. Some say you can watch all of Estepona go by from here. They barely exaggerate.
The details
Glass buoys, wicker fish traps and bottles that give light.
What you miss at first glance and remember at the second. Every lamp tells something about the sea four streets away.
The day, hour by hour
- 7:30We open. Coffee, bocadillo de carne mechá and the regulars.
- 12:00First beers, first conchas finas.
- 14:00Rice and fish of the day. The terrace, full.
- 17:30Coffee, something sweet, merienda.
- 20:30Dinner. In summer, until the square empties.
- 00:00We close, or when the last dinner ends, which runs later depending on the season. On Mondays, we rest.
Calle Terraza, 57 · 29680 Estepona
Getting here
Calle Terraza, 57, right in the old town, a five-minute walk from the beach and a stroll from the port. Public car park on Plaza Antonia Guerrero itself, right by the terrace. If you are walking along calle Terraza you cannot miss it: look for the illuminated sign that says “desde 1964”.
Tuesday to Sunday, 7:30 to 00:00 · Closed on Mondays
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