El Rebojo is a small restaurant in Garachico, about ten minutes along the coast from San Marcos. It is one of two places in the town our hosts pick out for the cooking itself rather than the view, and the thing they note is the care: plates that have been thought about.
What “attention to detail” means here
Garachico has restaurants that trade on the setting — the old harbour, the rock pools, the seafront terraces. That is a perfectly good reason to eat somewhere, and several of them are recommended elsewhere in this guide.
El Rebojo is on the list for a different reason. It is the kind of kitchen where the composition of the plate is deliberate, portions are measured rather than piled, and something has been done to the fish beyond putting it over charcoal. If you have spent a few days eating very good but very plain grilled fish — which is the honest default on this coast — it is a change of pace.
The wine to ask for
As at Silogía, the bottle to ask for is Viña Zanata, made in La Guancha a few kilometres up the coast.
Tenerife’s vines survived the phylloxera epidemic that destroyed most of Europe’s vineyards in the nineteenth century, so many still grow on their own ungrafted roots in volcanic soil. The island produces small quantities and exports very little. Ordering the local white here is not box-ticking; it is close to the only practical way to try it.
The town under your feet
Garachico was the most important port in the Canary Islands for two centuries, shipping malvasía wine out to Europe and the Americas from a natural harbour below the cliff.
In May 1706 the Trevejo volcano erupted above the town and seven lava flows filled that harbour in. The trade went with it. What survived is a compact old town, unusually unchanged because the money left three hundred years ago, and a coastline of black rock pools formed where the lava met the sea.
Eating well in a town that lost its reason to exist is a slightly strange pleasure, and it is a large part of why we keep going back.
Getting there
Ten minutes by car. Park on the way in rather than hunting for a space in the centre. As everywhere on this coast, check the hours first — small restaurants here close in the afternoon and shift their days without notice.