El Puerto de Santa Maria is a paradise for seafood lovers.

You can’t come to El Puerto without trying the fish. Not only is it a major tourist attraction, but it has become like an initiation ritual - inviting visitors to get a taste of the real Spain.

The bay of Cádiz has an amazingly diverse range of fish and crustaceans. The surrounding fruit fields produce a mouthwatering variety of fruit and vegetables. El Puerto’s gastronomy is exquisite. The surrounding natural resources are used to their full extent.

Take a stroll down by the Guadalete river, near the pine groves, and you’ll see artichokes and peas growing in the fields. Chicken stew with peas is a very popular dish here, especially on Fridays during lent. The Guadalete also produces some fine shrimp, which are used to make omlettes.

Down by Puerto Real, the fishermen catch enormous white crabs that are know locally as bocas de las islas or “mouths of the Island”.
They also collect clams here, along with sea snails, razor clams, and oysters. The restaurants cook the clams by marinating them or cooking them with paprika, rice or noodles.

El Puerto is famous for its Shelfish, Our local shrimp is superb. The restaurants and bars known as cocederos specialise in shrimp dishes served with rice, and also in delicious omelettes. Next is the prawns. A very popular dish is the Salpicon. It’s a salad made with diced tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and of course, prawns.

The fruit trees of El Puerto provide us with: apricots, pears, various types of plums, cherries, peaches, abrioles - a mix of peach and cherry, paraguayan fruit, melons and watermelons.

The variety of seafood here is immense; the surrounding waters provide: prawns, tiger-prawns, Norway lobster, crabs, sea-snails, shrimps, goose barnacles, sea-bullocks, winkles, lobster, spiny lobster, mussels of the island and more…the most popular are the prawns, tiger prawns and crab.