A Taste of Granada – The Granada Food Tour That Goes Beyond Tapas

This Granada food tour explores tapas, wine, local producers, and much more. Here’s my review of what to expect of Spain Food Sherpas, the food tour company that opens your eyes to the food scene in Granada beyond just tapas.

Spaniards are a very modest people. I know that well because I was born and grew up in Northern Spain. Showing off and boasting is not seen as an admirable thing to do, it is instead seen as a flaw. 

This is one of the reasons why Spanish food and wine are not as well known and revered outside of Spain as, say, Italian or French.

I have lived outside of Spain most of my life, and every time I visit I am reminded that it really has some of the most delicious products and dishes and of the best quality. This always goes hand in hand with a great deal of passion from producers and food vendors.

This is why I often try to do a food tour every time I visit Spain, or any other country really. I’ve done food tours in Reykjavik, New York, Phuket, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, Madeira, and many more places. There is no better way to get to know a country’s culture than through its food and its eating habits.

So when I visited Granada, I was not going to make an exception. I got in touch with Spain Food Sherpas and booked myself into their Taste of Granada tour.

A food tour with a sustainable focus

For full disclosure, I met the Managing Director of Spain Food Sherpas Granada a few years ago on a trip around Lombardy, Italy. During this trip, her passion for local food, traditions, and the importance of supporting local producers was apparent.

And I’d always wanted to visit Granada, so I knew I’d be joining one of her tours when I made it there.

The Taste of Granada tour is designed for very small groups of up to 10 people, to allow for a more personal and intimate experience. I visited Granada in November, so being low season, it was only myself and my mum on the tour.

And it turned out to be amazing to have this one-to-one experience. 

One of the things that I loved most about Spain Food Sherpas Granada was their focus on zero miles food and seasonal produce, slow tourism, and support for small scale family-run businesses. 

Because there is such a focus on seasonal produce, there’s a chance that food tours will vary. But I’m convinced they will all be just as great!

The tour lasts 3.5 hours and it costs 65 Euros.

Book your Taste of Granada tour here

Meeting our Taste of Granada food tour guide

We met Katia, our food tour guide, by the Isabel La Católica Theatre at 6pm. I was really happy that the food tour was in the evening instead of it being a daytime food tour, so we could wind down for the day after the tour was over.

Katia, originally from Russia, was a lovely Granadina that had spent the last 15 years nurturing a deep love for all things Granada – from the local traditions to the gastronomy.

I was really interested in learning that she used to have her own restaurant and worked with one of the best chefs in the city. I immediately knew that we were in good hands with Katia, and that she was going to be sharing some great knowledge of Granadian food.

And when I say Granadian food, I’m referring to all kinds of food. This is, after all, more than just a Granada tapas tour. 

Granada is famous for the free (yes, really!) tapas that you get when you order a drink at a bar. But you can dig a lot deeper into the Granada food scene than just tapas, so let’s get started with the tour!

Learning about jamón (cured ham)

It’s amazing what you learn on a food tour, and even more amazing when it’s the impact a petty decision by a historical figure can have on a country’s culture and gastronomy.

Granada was the last Independent Muslim State in Western Europe, until it was conquered by the Catholic Monarch in 1492. When Granada fell, Queen Isabella of Castille, who was a staunch Catholic, decided to make pork one of the main staples of the local diet.

This would ensure that any Muslims and Jews left after the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, would find life difficult in the city, unless they converted to Catholicism. 

This petty decision is one of the reasons why pork, and, of course, cured ham, is today such an important element in Spanish food culture.

But, as I learnt on a food tour in Valencia, not all cured hams (jamones) are the same. You have jamón serrano, ham from white pigs, and jamón ibérico, ham from black Iberian pigs.

On our first stop of the tour, we got to try three different kinds of jamón ibérico, each better than the previous one.

Starting with pata negra (black leg) ham, we learnt that the origins of this type of pig came from breeding white pigs with boars.

We first tried the jamón de bellota de pata negra, which is from pork is fed with acorns, and then jamón de cebo de pata negra, which is from pork fed with high quality commercial feed.

Then we tried Jamón de Trevelez. Trevelez is a small village nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains at nearly 1,500 metres of altitude.

Being one of the highest villages in Spain creates the perfect conditions for air-curing legs of ham, and this is what gives it its very distinctive and intense flavour.

We also drank a little glass of mosto de pueblo, a traditional wine free of chemicals made in the mountain villages, which went really well with the jamón.

Olive oil tasting

When you think of a tasting session you normally think of wine tasting or perhaps whiskey tasting, but olive oil tasting? Yes, please! You soon realise how subtly different olive oil can be, from aromatic and smooth, to bitter and even peppery.

So our next stop was an oleoteca, an olive oil tasting room. 

Spain is the largest olive oil producer in the world. Sometimes, it’s even sold to other olive oil producing countries that, in turn, sell it as their own. 

But as I mentioned earlier, Spaniards are not great at boasting about the amazing quality of their own products to the mainstream market, so the knowledge of such high quality tends to stay local.

Although some argue that they may just want to keep the best products for themselves! And who can blame them?

Olive harvest season starts in October, and it’s collected manually. So, very often communities come together to carry out the harvest.

The olives must be processed the same day they are collected. They are pressed at no more than 28 degrees centigrade, and the final flavour of the olive oil will be influenced by the water, soil type and climate.

We got to try five different kinds of olive oil made with four different varieties of olives, by dipping some fresh bread into it.

Arbequina olive oil was the smoothest of the three. It had a very aromatic flavour with green apple undertones. The flavour reminded me of the smell of tomato plants or recently cut grass, very fresh and herby.

The second variety we tried was Frantoio, another aromatic variety with a smoother taste but a bit more savoury and a slightly peppery finish.

We continued tasting with Hojiblanca, an olive oil of intense green colour that starts off with a slightly sweet flavour and develops in your mouth into a bitter taste that reminded me of unripe fruit, and a hot peppery finish.

Picual was the next variety we tried. This variety of olives is the most cultivated in Spain, and the oil made with Picual is of an intense green colour with a fruity flavour and a spicy peppery finish.

The final olive oil was Composición, which is a blend of varieties where the olives are mixed at the pressing stage, rather than after pressing.

All the olive oils we tasted had been pressed and bottled the previous month, so they were incredibly fresh. My favourite variety was Arbequina, so I bought myself a bottle to take home and I’m currently working my way through it.

We also tried dark chocolate made with olive oil in bread coated in oil (a true revelation!) and green olive patê.

A dying art and a surviving delicatessen

During our foodie exploration of Granada with Katia, we got to try some amazing products of the Alpujarras, a small region within the province of Granada located at the foot of Sierra Nevada. The Alpujarras are famous for their local products. 

We tried ewe’s cheese, two kinds of goat’s cheese, one of them with chilli, and crema de jamón (‘ham cream’). Crema de jamón is neither a cream nor is cream part of its ingredients. It’s like a cured ham patê that is incredibly tasty.

While we tasted these local delicacies, we learnt about taracea, an art unique to Granada. It’s a technique that tries to reproduce the original pieces of furniture that decorated the palace of the Alhambra 700 years ago.

Originating from North Africa, this highly decorative art arrived in Spain during time of Al-Alandalus, the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian peninsula, between the 8th and 15th century.

Taracea consists of inlaying intricate geometric details onto furniture and other decorative items. The inlaid pieces were traditionally made of materials such as mother of pearl, tortoiseshell, ivory, bone, etc. Learn a bit more about taracea.

Sadly, this highly skilled art is dying and there aren’t that many workshops creating such intricate work any more. But if you’d like your own taracea piece, you can get this tray made in Granada.

From a dying art, we went to a true survivor of the times – a little shop called Oliver. Oliver has been around since 1850, so it has seen a lot of changes in Granada. It specialises in nuts and dried fruits, which include Australian macadamias and Indian walnuts.

Run by the 5th generation of the same family, the shop itself has kept the original display cabinets and wooden counter, a real piece of history.

While we were here we bought some fried almonds with honey and salt. Delicious!

Finishing off with tapas and wine

Tapas is not everything Granada has to offer when it comes to food, but you can’t really do a food tour in Granada without tapas and, of course, wine.

There are many stories about the origin of tapas. One of them says that King Alfonso XIII stopped in Cádiz, one of the warmest cities in Europe in winter. 

While he was having a glass of sherry during a very windy day in Cádiz, the innkeeper used a slice of ham as a lid (tapa) on the glass to stop sand going in. Others say that it was to keep the flies away from the drink. 

Whatever the reason was, it was ingenious, and tapas are now one of the most important aspects of food culture in Spain.

So for this part of the Taste of Granada tour we visited Bodegas Castañeda, where we had berenjena a la miel (fried aubergine sticks with honey) and lomo de orza (preserved pork loin with paprika).

Aubergine is very typical from Granada, and was introduced in Spain by the Arabs, as was the tradition mixing of both savoury and sweet in the same dish.

An orza is a large clay pot in the shape of a jar that is used to preserve meat. Traditionally, pork meat used to be preserved after the slaughter in orzas by adding lard and letting it solidify.

We accompanied the berenjena and the lomo with a glass of verdejo to start with. A wine that oxidises very easily so it is harvested during the night.

This was followed by a really smooth glass of rosé Syrah by Contreras Ruiz, a family run vineyard from Huelva, a province near Granada. This was my favourite wine of the night.

While we tasted the wine, more tapas came to the table – tortilla de patata (potato omelette) and croqueta de jamón (ham croquette). Tortilla is the Spanish tapa par excellence, and it’s proper Spanish comfort food. It’s made with eggs, fried potato shavings, and onion. That’s it!

Croquetas were actually invented in France, however they are not that well known there. Spain however has embraced this delicious finger food and made it its own. 

To accompany these last two tapas, we had a glass of shiraz from Huelva too. Shiraz is a grape that was originally cultivated in the Iranian region of the same name.

Even MORE tapas and wine

When we thought the tour was coming to an end, we still had one more stop to go – Bar Chikito. 

Bar Chikito is one of the most iconic bars in Granada. It is located within what used to be Café Alameda, where literary genius Federico Garcia Lorca and great composer Manuel de Falla used to hang out here for tertulia. 

The tertulia is a social gathering of people with literary and artistic topics, but also where you discuss current affairs. This is a tradition that every social circle continues in Spain to this day. You can even see a statue of Lorca sitting at one of the tables in the restaurant.

Here we started off with a remojón granadino, a traditional Granadian cold salad with salted cod, oranges and black olives.

The next dish we tried was potaje de castaña (chestnut stew), an unusual dish but very warming and comforting. Autumn is the chestnut season in Europe, so it was perfect for those cold Granada evenings.

The wine we tried with these two dishes was Prado Negro Crianza by Fontedei, an award-winning Granada vineyard that grows at over 1,200 metres above sea level.

At this altitude the temperatures tend to be 35 degrees during the day and 18 degrees at nighttime. This change of temperatures makes the grape ripe in a different way to a traditional vineyard.

To finish off our tasting in Bar Chikito, and also the tour, we had leche frita (fried milk). This was one of my favourite desserts when I was a child, so I was really excited when I realised that I was going to try some in Granada!

Leche frita is made by mixing flour, milk and sugar until it thickens and sets. Once set it is coated in egg and fried, and then served with cinnamon sprinkled over it. Trying this really took me back to my childhood, and it was the perfect way to wrap up an amazing tour.

Practical information about the Taste of Granada food tour

I can highly recommend the Spain Food Sherpas tours. We were lucky that my mum and I had the tour to ourselves, but having a small group of up to 10 people would have been very enjoyable too.

Katia’s knowledge of local food, traditions and history was astounding, and we learnt so much about Granada. We were really happy that we did this tour on the first day of our Granada trip, as it gave us a lot of background and knowledge that we used to explore the city deeper.

The selection and quality of the food, the personal stories behind each business and producer, the fact that they were local and focused on zero miles produce, was a lot more than I expected from a food tour.

Spain Food Sherpas also offer tours in nearby cities such as Málaga and Sevilla, so I would recommend joining one of these too if you are exploring further afield in Andalucia.

My tour was Taste of Granada, the perfect way to start exploring this fascinating city through its food and wine. You don’t even have to be a connoisseur, all you need is a love for food and wine in general, and wanting to learn more about Spain while eating plenty of Granada food and tapas.

• Website: Spain Food Sherpas
• Tour Name: Taste of Granada
• What You Get: 3.5 hours of exploring Granada in the evening guided by a local English-speaking expert, delicious Spanish wine to go with several plates of incredible Granada food and tapas, plenty of local recommendations and tips, and a Granada Dining Guide that you can take with you at the end of the tour to continue eating and drinking your way through the city.
• Price: 65 Euros

If you would like to explore Granada’s history and culture further, here are some tours I’d personally recommend:

• Granada City Centre, Cathedral, Capilla and Madraza Tour
• Sunset Walking Tour in Albaicín and Sacromonte
• Alhambra Ticket and Guided Tour of Nasrid Palaces
• Flamenco Show in La Alboreá

What delicious food from this Granada food tour caught your eye the most?
Let me know in the comments below!

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Disclosure: This post has been created as a partnership with Spain Food Sherpas. As always, all views are my own.