La Parada is a traditional Canarian restaurant in Icod de los Vinos, about eight minutes up the hill from the apartment. Our hosts name it and El Mortero together as the places to go in Icod for proper local cooking.
What to order
The Canarian repertoire is narrow and done well: papas arrugadas — small potatoes boiled in heavily salted water until the skins wrinkle — with mojo rojo and mojo verde, the pepper and coriander sauces that accompany nearly everything here. Grilled or fried fish. Rabbit. Pork. Chickpea stew. Gofio, the toasted grain flour that predates the Spanish and still turns up as a thickener or a side.
None of it is elaborate. That is the point, and it is why it is worth eating where locals eat rather than where the menu has photographs.
Pairing it with the day
Icod is where you go for the practical things — the supermarkets, the pharmacy, the Drago Milenario — so lunch here fits naturally into a morning that was going to happen anyway.
Afterwards, the walk back down to San Marcos takes half an hour and is downhill the whole way.
Before you go
Check it is open. Traditional restaurants in Icod close through the afternoon and shuffle their days informally, as we have explained elsewhere. If La Parada is shut, El Mortero is the other half of the same recommendation.