Chikito

Chikito is not a restaurant in the conventional sense. It is a living museum of Granada dining, occupying the corner of Plaza del Campillo since 1930 and still run by the same family that fed Federico García Lorca, Manuel de Falla, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz and the rest of the Rinconcillo literary circle — the group of poets and artists who defined twentieth-century Granada from the zinc bar in the next room. Lorca's chair is still marked.

The menu is proudly unmoved. Andalusian classics — rabo de toro (oxtail) slow-cooked in Sherry, artichokes with jamón ibérico, habas con jamón, whole sea bass baked in Granadian salt, grilled morcilla de Granada (the local blood sausage with rice), and a tortilla del Sacromonte that includes the sweetbreads and brains the Moorish-Jewish community made famous in the 17th century. The kitchen has no interest in fashion; it cooks the dishes that Lorca ordered and that the city still wants to eat.

Service is old-school Granadian. Waiters in white jackets, trays rather than plates delivered at the table, a wine list that leans hard on Montilla-Moriles and Jerez rather than Rioja. The dining room is dark wood, bullfighting posters from the 1940s, and framed manuscripts on the walls. Upstairs the old private salon seats twelve; downstairs the tapas bar still fills at 14:00 with courts-and-politics lunch crowd from the nearby Audiencia Provincial. Chikito is what Granada looks like when it is not performing for tourists — and for that reason, it is the first table you should book.

For a Birthday: Chikito carries the weight of a century. The private first-floor salon seats twelve with advance notice, the service treats a birthday as a civic event, and the sommelier will produce a Lustau or Valdespino that sits in the cellar for exactly these moments. The kitchen will bring out the whole salt-baked sea bass for the table. For a Granadian, eating here on a birthday is the equivalent of a New Yorker eating at Peter Luger's — both the destination and the declaration.