Monday, 11 August 2025, 09:35
Quite a few Malaga restaurateurs are engaged in a banal controversy over who makes the best rice dishes and, worse still, who makes the most disparate ones in terms of flavours and products. But amidst so much back and forth, Javier Hernández has been making unbeatable traditional rice dishes for more than three decades. First at Entremares, then at Limonar 40 and for years now at Candado Golf. Each one of his rice dishes is an example of how to treat the grain so that it takes on all the flavour of the ingredients and does not overcook or fail to acquire the exact point that each type of rice and each variety should have.
I admit that I have been an enthusiast of Javier’s cuisine since the days when he opened his first business, Montesancha, and especially of his rice dishes. I have rarely had the opportunity to try rice dishes in Malaga that surpassed them and there are many that I have tasted throughout my professional wanderings in gastronomic journalism, not only in restaurants, but also in private kitchens, even rice is one of the few things that I dare to cook. But leaving aside the rice cuisine, Candado Golf is currently practising a cuisine of traditional flavours that is by no means exempt from current events. The first time I wrote about Javier Hernández, at the beginning of the nineties, I said that he was cooking «21st century cuisine» and, today more than ever after my last visit to this house, I reaffirm what I said at the time.
The new seasonal menu at Candado Golf maintains the updated classicism expected from the cuisine of Javier Hernández, but it is adjusted to the seasonal parameters in which we find ourselves, especially in terms of the products avaialable at the market, and respond to the quality requirements of an establishment as renowned as this one. Freshness and simplicity, not without imagination and creativity, is what we are going to find in dishes such as mussels with gazpachuelo or the classic prawns in pilpil sauce which Javier accompanies with Iberian pigs cheeks. Spoon dishes, both in winter and summer, continue to be one of the mainstays of this house’s cuisine.
Address:
Golf del Candado, 2. Malaga
Telephone:
952 299 341.
Closed:
Mondays and Tuesdays.
Web:
www.elrestaurantedelcandadogolf.es
Prices:
Ensaladilla: 15€. Salpicón: 21€. Arroz de bacalao: 25€
Valuation:
Kitchen: 8.5; Dining room: 7; Wine list: 7.5; Rating: 8.5 / 10
Service and wine list meet the expectations of the clientele.
Ensaladilla
This salad is still one of the best in Malaga. Here we do not find sauces or products that are alien to what a traditional salad should have. Javier won the San Sebastián Gastronomika award, well deserved.
Avocado Salpicón
A smooth, almost liquid, mayonnaise with mustard is the common thread and the prawns perfectly cooked which fuse with the flavour of the avocado to achieve a very refreshing sauce. A summer dish that stands out for its freshness.
Mussels with gazpachuelo
This is undoubtedly this season’s star dish. It is not a classic gazpachuelo accompanied by mussels. They are French mussels, small in size, but very tasty with a gazpachuelo base.
Red shrimp rice
When there is a good red shrimp at Candado Golf, Javier prepares one of his most successful rice dishes. A paella rice made with a good fish and seafood base and lightly cooked prawns.
