Seafood in Cambrils

What to do

The fishing boats come in around 16:30 on weekdays, and the fish auction at the port runs from about 17:00, Monday to Friday — the actual working process behind “the fishing boats still land the lunch,” not just a line about atmosphere. The natural anchor for a day at the coves south of it — Platja Cristall, Calafat — dinner after a day in the water, not a stop on the way to Salou. That auction is worth arranging a day around if the working side of a fishing town interests you at all. The boats come in, the catch goes straight to the floor, and the restaurants along the front buy from it — which is the unglamorous mechanism behind every menu in the town claiming the fish is local. It is a short walk from where you would park, and it costs nothing to stand and watch. Eating is the reason to come, and Kai has three specific answers rather than a general recommendation. For rice, ROCE. They are deliberate about calling it rice and not paella, they take a creative line with it, and they say openly that they intend to be the best rice place around; on his reckoning they are the best nearby. For an ordinary good lunch, the Club Nàutic, which sits across the road from the strip everyone walks and is quieter and a little more special for it, without being expensive. The third is the one worth the walk. Keep going past the Club Nàutic to the end of the pier, out by the red lighthouse, and there is a small bar with a terrace over the mouth of the harbour: Bar Barlovento. It is inside the nautical club, which is precisely why nobody walking the seafront ever finds it. Drinks and lunchtime snacks, the best views in town, and mostly locals. Kai’s own line is that no tourist ever finds this place. A note on timing, because it decides whether the town is pleasant or not. August on this coast is busy everywhere, and Cambrils is no exception along the seafront. Out of the peak fortnight it reverts to being a working port that happens to have good restaurants in it, which is the version worth driving down for. South of here the coast gets better and quieter. L’Ametlla de Mar is a day trip in its own right, easily combined with a swim: Cala Calafat is usually calm, Cala Sant Jordi is the other one he names, and both are good for snorkelling. He is a diving instructor, so the recommendation carries a bit more weight than a guidebook’s would — these are coves picked for what is under the surface as much as on it. Further again, and this is a full day rather than an afternoon, the Ebro delta. Flat, strange, full of birds, and the best rice cooking in the region by some distance. Eel is the local speciality and the crab is worth ordering. It is about as different from a hillside above Alforja as anywhere within reach, which is the argument for going. One more, for a particular sort of guest. The same Calafat that gives its name to the cove also has a motor-racing circuit, with karting alongside it and operators who will put you in a sports car for laps of the track. Kai’s read is that it is likely more affordable than the famous circuits, though that is his impression, not a checked price, so treat it as a reason to look, not a quote. If anyone in the group follows motorsport it is worth checking the events calendar before you travel, and it pairs neatly with the Ametlla coves because they are the same trip down the coast. The shape of a coast day from here, then: leave late morning, swim somewhere quiet, eat rice in Cambrils in the afternoon, and finish with a drink at the end of the pier while the harbour goes orange. It is about forty minutes each way, so none of it costs you the evening back at the house.