Parador de Granada, Alhambra, Granada

It is hard to beat the location of this hotel restaurant, a revamped 16^th century monastery built over a Nazrid palace inside the Alhambra walls Although the hotel is booked up months in advance, the restaurant is open to any Alhambra visitor, imposing a relentless kitchen rhythm.

Chef Juan Francisco Castro is passionate about the menu, which features several dishes culled from 12^th century Nazrid sources. “Their ingredients were good,” he tells me. “But for example, fish was never fresh, always salted. And we had to change some cooking times as the initial results were horrible!”