THEY were among the most tender slices of beef I’ve ever tried.
Served up like chocolate drops, with a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper, the tataki melted in the mouth and left me literally weak at the knees.
This was the highest grade of Japanese Kobe beef available, our host Agustin Polo assured us, explaining that it had a ‘Beef Marbling Standard’ or ‘BMP’ of 12, no less.
After heating them up with a hand-held burner, he quickly located the label which proved it, and even better, we discovered it came from a cow called ‘Hiroshima’ culled earlier this year.
An authentic ‘bomba’ as the Spanish would say, the main issue was what on earth should you serve up to drink with it.
A simple question for a man, whose family have been buying and selling wines since 1982.
“You need something with plenty of strength to hold it,” explained Agustin, 49, who has been running El Cid Distribution since 2013.
A click of the fingers and out came a big beast called Versus Mare, made out of Syrah grapes from Condado de Huelva and with ‘a real hint of salty air,’ Agustin insisted.
The pairing was indeed perfect and we sat in silence for half a minute to take it all in.
We were trying a new wine pairing idea that El Cid is organizing at the family’s own vinoteca, La Tizona, in San Pedro Alcantara.
Mixing five wines with a similar number of dishes is the brainchild of Agustin, a former padel teacher who was eventually encouraged back into the fold to work for the family firm.
Taking its name from a hotel his father had bought in 1980 (the first in San Pedro), El Cid started out from a little shop on its ground floor.
Growing little by little, particularly since re-launching in 2013, it now works with 350 individual references from 30 wineries in Spain and dozens from abroad.
This includes one of France’s leading champagne producers Nicolas Feuillatte, of which El Cid sells four different bottles, from the basic costing €40 up to the tete de cuvee, a nine-year-old vintage called Palmes d’Or at €215 a pop.
“We sell around 100 bottles of that a year and maybe 1,500 bottles of the basic one,” explains Agustin, who runs the business with his brother and sister and with 25 employees on top.
We try the entry level sparkler, alongside a mixture of anchovies, from Cantabria, and naturally, oysters, size 2, from France.
It’s a terrific start to a lovely lunch, which soon leads on to wine number two; a Sauvignon Blanc, Cote des Roses, 2024, from the Langoudoc region of France.
This honeyed chestnut is the perfect balance to, easily, the dish of the day: a brioche with bluefin tuna ham, caviar and shavings of smoked butter on top. These two rich bites of heaven are hard to beat, with the tuna coming from just up the road in Barbate, Cadiz, where Agustin spends a lot of time, he tells us.
His firm has been one of the main distributors of Barbadillo wine from Sanlucar for many years and they also sell a lot of sherry. “But we get a lot of our food from Cadiz as well,” he continues.
It’s time to move on to a rose, but we are sadly not trying the ‘best in the world’ as Agustin claims, a €242 biodynamic bottle, also from the Langoudoc, called Clos du Temple, which he waves around in front of us.
However, its substitute, Gris Blanc, is El Cid’s most sold and is a very refreshing drink, chilled from the fridge and bristling with goodness.
For this pairing he insists we should try the tortilla Espanola, which quickly leads on to a discussion about the small Galician town of Betanzos, about an hour from Santiago de Compostela, where the world’s best tortillas are made. I’ve been there twice and we all agree, there really is no comparison anywhere else.
Our effort in La Tizona today is not a million miles off, saying that. Actually prepared by a company in Galicia it comes fresh by the day and is merely warmed up in situ.
“We love experimenting with the best products we can,” explains Agustin (whose father and son are also called Agustin). “We were lucky to have acquired this restaurant during the COVID pandemic when everyone was on lockdown and stuck at home.”
While the pandemic had stopped his wine business in its tracks, slashing its annual turnover in half, things are really looking rosy again now.
“The restaurant is open all day and full of professionals and foodies,” he explains. “And we are starting to cover the whole of Malaga now with lots of our wines.
“There is no doubt 2025 will be our best year for five and next year even better.”
Keep serving up Kobe beef that good and I’m sure it will.
For more information visit www.latizona.com
IT’S rare to find a wine bar where you can actually eat properly.
La Tizona in San Pedro Alcantara is one such rarity.
Drinks-wise it is hard to go wrong when the restaurant is owned by a wine importer and distribution company.
And El Cid has been providing Andalucia and further afield with a range of top quality plonk since the early 1980s.
At La Tizona you’ll find a few hundred references of what’s available from the nearby bodegas of Ronda to the faraway chestnuts of Mendoza, in Argentina.
Even better, there are over two dozen available by the glass including a Sauvignon from Italy (Saude) and a Pinot Noir (Domaine de l’Aigle) from Valle de l’aude in France.
And the wine list also changes every few weeks, while it counts on one of Spain’s best beers by the glass, Ambar, one of only two independent breweries left, owner Agustin tells me.
But that’s not my favourite thing about La Tizona, which has been open in the heart of San Pedro for a few years now.
This strategic spot has an all-day kitchen and an adventurous menu that matches its wine.
It also has one of the nicest terraces in town, a superb place to watch the world go by.
Keep an eye out for Agustin, a well known local padel player, who knows a lot about the local culinary scene.
“We know how important it is to serve up quality dishes and ingredients as San Pedro keeps going further and further upmarket,” he explains.
Menu wise it has a big range of things: great Iberian ham, superb local cheeses and a good mix of starters including a cold salmorejo soup from Cordoba and a guacamole with garlic octopus and smoked chili sauce.
I really liked the Gildas with an olive, pepper and anchovy and truffled Iberian burrata, tomato,
oysters, with an avocado and smoked fish salad.
There was a decent range of specials of the day including poached leeks in olives with chives in lime juice cooked in a wood oven very slowly.
Another special was the rabo de toro (oxtail), nicely braised and served with puree potato.
Next up we had the avocado and smoked fish salad, which was salmon, cod and trout and should have been a disaster but actually somehow worked really well.
To finish I tried the lovely blue cheese Stilton soaked in a Pedro Ximenez from Huelva for 90 days. Talk about punch. I was still tasting the following day.
For more information visit www.latizona.com
Click here to read more Málaga News from The Olive Press.
