An eating and drinking guide to A Coruña

The small Spanish city that punches well above its size

These are snippets of what I sent my husband yesterday afternoon as I was writing this. FYI, I swear a lot when I feel passionate or enthusiastic about something. And I am both about this city.

(“Logronners” is our nickname for Logroño, another brilliant Spanish town which we used to call home. You can read my guide to Logroño here).

This is the sixth in-depth travel guide I’ve written here at The Sauce. It joins the ranks of Logroño, San Sebastian, Rome, Jerez and Porto. Truth be told, I’m rather proud of them, largely because I adhere to three simple but strict parameters.

One, I must know the town well. No fly-by-night guides allowed:

A little more Bourdain, a little less TikTok

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Two, the place has to make me send texts like the ones above. Wanting to return is the mark of somewhere worth writing about.

And three, I’ll always give a free recommendation or two, but the bulk of the guides are behind the paywall. These are boots-on-the-ground researched articles only made possible by my wonderful cohort of paid subscribers.

As a reminder, $5 a month or $50 a year gets you access to all of The Sauce, including recipes, essays on the state of food and drink culture, and these in-depth travel guides.

Any night worth its salt in Spain starts with a caña of beer at an old school tapas bar. In A Coruña that means La Bombilla, a small tapas bar that has been slinging tapas and cold beer for decades.

La Bombilla takes part in a tradition I’ve written about before — the daily special. Saturday, for instance, is callos (tripe) day — not just in La Bombilla but across the whole city.

Thursday is my personal favourite — Fabada day. A thick bean and meat stew from nearby Austurias.

At 7pm, La Bombilla is unusually busy for a Spanish tapas bar. We find a small spot at the bar and order tapas of fabada, tortilla and homemade gazpacho soup. At €1.70 a go (at time of writing), this is a place to fill your belly with good for cheap, and many people around us are doing exactly that.

However much my heart loves the old school, I’m really in A Coruña for its wine scene. This city is close to some of the most exciting Spanish wine regions. Little-known names like Bierzo, Ribeiro and Valdeorras are just an hour or two away and their bottles make up the backbone of wine bars in A Coruña.

However, this is Spain. And Spain is never afraid of listing their homegrown against the best names in the wine world, from France to Italy to Germany to nearby Portugal.

You’ll find it all in the bars here. It’s one of the reasons I love the town so much.

How Spain Has One of the Best (and Most Affordable) Wine Scenes in the World