Restaurante El Ánfora

Restaurante El Ánfora is a long-established family restaurant on Calle Millán Astray in central Ceuta, specialising in traditional Ceutí and Andalusian cooking in a relaxed neighbourhood dining format. The kitchen has no celebrity chef or Michelin ambitions; its appeal rests on consistent quality, fair pricing, and a menu that documents the genuine cooking of this small Spanish enclave on the African coast. Urta a la roteña is the signature and the dish that best defines the restaurant's identity: urta (red porgy), a Strait-caught fish of considerable quality, is simmered in a sauce of tomatoes, green peppers, white wine, and olive oil from the cooking tradition of the fishing town of Rota in the Bay of Cádiz. It is a dish that rewards both quality of fish and attentiveness at the stove, and El Ánfora executes it faithfully. Espinacas con garbanzos — spinach with chickpeas, one of Seville's most widely exported dishes, carried by Arab and later Andalusian tradition across the south of Spain — is the finest vegetable dish on the menu: deeply savoury, thick with cumin and ñora pepper, and served with crusty bread. Bienmesabe, the almond-cream dessert of southern Andalusia and the Canary Islands, rounds off the meal on a sweet, nutty note. The dining room is quiet and unhurried, furnished simply and without pretension, and the pace of service reflects the cooking — measured, careful, and without shortcuts. A menú del día at lunch provides three courses with wine for around €12–14.