Amarca is a seafront restaurant on Playa de San Marcos, the black-sand bay below Icod de los Vinos on Tenerife’s north coast. It cooks fish over charcoal and makes Valencian-style paella, and it is the closest proper restaurant to our apartment — a few minutes’ walk downhill.
What they cook
The menu is built around fish. Grilled sardines, squid and whatever came in fresh, usually priced by weight and chosen at the counter rather than picked off a list. That is the normal way to buy fish on this coast, and it is worth knowing before you sit down: you are choosing an actual fish, and the price follows its size.
The other half of the kitchen is paella, made Valencian-style and offered in several versions — seafood, meat, mixed, and a vegetarian one. Paella is not a Canarian dish; it is Spanish mainland cooking that has settled comfortably into coastal restaurants here. Expect to order it for the table and to wait, because it is cooked to order.
Alongside those there are the standard Spanish seafront starters — boquerones in vinegar, pulpo a la gallega, gambas al ajillo — and a wine list that leans on Rioja and Ribera del Duero as well as Canarian bottles.
Why the location matters
Playa de San Marcos is a small bay, about 160 metres of black volcanic sand, enclosed by cliffs. The seafront avenue that Amarca sits on is essentially the whole village frontage: a row of restaurants and terraces facing the Atlantic, with the cliff rising directly behind.
That geography is the reason to eat here rather than drive somewhere. You are eating fish within sight of the water it came from, and afterwards you can walk back up the hill instead of worrying about the road.
Before you go
Check the current opening times on Google Maps before you set out. Restaurants on this coast keep hours that surprise visitors — long lunches, a closed afternoon, dinner from seven or eight — and in a village this size the opening days are an informal arrangement between neighbours rather than a fixed schedule. We have written about why the restaurant is shut when you turn up, because it happens to almost everyone once.