Manuel Zamora

Casablanca is another of Andalucía’s hidden secrets, tucked down a side-street in central Seville behind a nondescript closed door. Push it open and you enter a tiny gastronomic heaven frequented by Seville’s top brass and the odd bullfighter. The chef, a generous, ebullient Andaluz in his early 40s, Manuel Zamora, thinks, breathes - and probably dreams - food. ‘I started as a dishwasher in a five-star restaurant at the age of 15 and never stopped asking the cooks and staff questions about what was being made,’ he says. He kept this questioning attitude as he worked his way up the ladder, via Las Palmas, to the Parador de Carmona, before entering the highly-rated Casablanca. Today, having cooked tapas, lunches and dinners for six days of the week, Manuel will spend his day off tending the olive trees, tomatoes and cloves in his vegetable garden or looking at cookery books.