Do not walk past this restaurant without going in! We had booked it before we arrived in Seville, and made the mistake of checking it out the day before we went for dinner. With a tiny menu, cramped bar and a load of battered tables outside, it did not look like a culinary hotspot, and we very nearly canceled.

Well, thank goodness we didn’t. This was the best meal of the holiday, and also a complete eye-opener. The one thing this restaurant is known for is sherry. If you grew up in the UK, sherry will be the one drink that give the choice between a firing squad and a glass of sweet sherry, you would be very tempted to take the quick way out. Only your Granny drank sherry, in eye-dropper sized quantities.

But can the whole of Andalusia really be that wrong? After all , it is the birthplace of Picasso, Lorca and, er, Antonio Banderas.

There was a bewildering selection, so we asked for some advice. Amontillado for the lady, and the rougher Palo Cortado for the gentleman. After that, it was a stab at the menu based purely on the “not the cheapest, not the most expensive” (also known as the second from the top) philosophy that generally works so badly when choosing wine.

Again, if you are British, you will be looking at the label thinking “Harveys Bristol Cream”, which is the stuff of Xmas nightmares, and definitely a reason in itself to ban the advertising of alcohol on TV.

Well, think again. It was amazing. Truly revelatory: And, it turns now we are home, stupidly difficult to get in the UK, so if this review has been in the least bit helpful, please bring me some back… We were introduced to fortified wine via a Madeira we were given at an Oddbins (RIP) wine tasting a couple of years ago, which was magnificent. This is an order of magnitude better.

Also, the waiter who served us was delightful, and even arranged the bottles and glasses for me so I could photograph them better (although I may have left him with the impression that the English are all a little loco).

So, the starters were excellent (I had duck pate again, see my review of De La O), but the tour de force was the main course, which was some sort of fried fish. I am vague here, not because I can’t remember what I ate, but more because I never knew. The fish of the day was apparently off the menu, but would be like…

The name meant nothing and Google was no-one’s friend at this point. It does remind you that while translation apps have come a long way, food terms are still much under-represented, although things have improved since the 1990s when we toured France with a battered A-Z Gastronomique, picking words out one by one, much to the annoyance of many a waiter…

Anyhow, the fish is freshly filleted into cubes, and then everything (yes, bones as well) fried. The pictures say it all.

Did we eat bits off the bones? Hell yes!

We also ordered the most amazing Beef Cannelloni with Mushrooms. which was tasty, rich and tender. It was far too much food!

And the bread. Seville seems to be infected with the same attitude to bread that you find in places like Venice. It should be pale, vaguely ovoid, and taste stale, even if freshly baked. In Venice you often get the added bonus that it explodes into a thousand pieces when you try and break it open.

But not at Palo Cortao: This was home-made, clearly very fresh, and came with butter infused with something. I could have sworn it was Marmite (not my thing), but it added a lot to the bread. Perfectly paired.

We each had a couple of glasses of wine, which was staggeringly good, and staggeringly cheap (it is hard to overpay for wine in Seville), and left immensely happy. It would have been easy to go back on our last night, but we still had to check out El Rinconillo (https://www.elrinconcillo.es/en/home/) another sherry haunt.

Update, January 2026. Sadly, this lovely restuarant has now closed. Take a look at my other recommendations in my main Seville Guide.

Rating: 5/5

Palo Cortao: https://www.palo-cortao.com/