Granada Tapas Tours: The Free-Tapa City
Granada is the one Spanish city where the tapa is still free: order a drink and a plate arrives with it, and it gets better with every round, through the Moorish lanes of the Albaicín and the bars of the Realejo. Compare the top-rated tapas tours below, then read our notes.
Why Granada for tapas? Because at most bars a free tapa comes with every drink, a custom the rest of Spain lost, and the food carries a Moorish accent you find nowhere else.
Formats: tapas crawls through the Albaicín and Realejo with drinks and the free tapas explained; food tours with market tastings; all-inclusive evenings with extra plates and wine.
What you will taste: jamón de Trevélez from the mountains, habas con jamón, remojón salad of orange, cod and olives, tortilla del Sacromonte, Moorish-spiced dishes, and a glass of Alpujarras wine or a caña.
The free tapa
Granada kept the tradition the rest of Spain charges for: at most bars, every drink comes with a free tapa, and the good places make the tapas better as you keep ordering, so a couple of rounds becomes dinner. The catch is knowing which bars, because the range runs from a bowl of olives to a proper plate of stewed meat. A guided crawl solves that, taking you to the bars that treat the free tapa as a point of pride, mostly in the Realejo, the old Jewish quarter, and around the Albaicín, the Moorish hillside opposite the Alhambra.
Granada’s own food
The city’s food is Andalusian with a North African memory: habas con jamón, broad beans with ham; remojón, a salad of orange, salt cod and olives; tortilla del Sacromonte; and jamón de Trevélez, air-cured high in the Alpujarras mountains. The teterías, the Moorish tea houses of the Albaicín, are the sweet end of it, and the piononos, little rolled cream pastries, come from nearby Santa Fe.
How to do it
Tapas tours run in the evening for two and a half to three hours, five or six bars, the free tapas plus a few ordered plates and wine. Groups of eight to twelve. Because Granada’s system is unlike anywhere else, a tour on the first night pays for itself in bars you would never have found. Read our tapas guide for the wider picture.
Frequently asked questions
Are tapas really free in Granada?
At most bars, yes: a tapa comes with each drink at no extra cost, which is why the city is a tapas destination in its own right. A few tourist bars have dropped it, which is where a guide helps.
How many bars on a tour?
Five or six over an evening, enough food and drink to replace dinner.
Is Granada food different from the rest of Andalusia?
Yes; the Moorish influence is stronger, and the free-tapa custom and the mountain ham are its own.
How we choose
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