El Vegetariano de la Alcazabilla

I have had the meal two times in the restaurant. First time food was "one star", and second time "three star". Today our visit was cut because of arrogant behavuour of waiter. I could not stand it, and we left.

A pretty vegetarian restaurant in a central location.

I chose the mixed selection of croquettas and it was a pleasure to be able to eat authentic Spanish food suitable for vegetarians. They came with rice, a pastry thing and some pisto (ratatouille).

With hindsight i wish I'd chosen something lighter and more healthy like a salad. The food was good but very heavy on carbs ( they brought out a huge quantity of bread too) and deep-fried.

The food was good quality, and the restaurant decor nice. An extensive menu in various languages and some vegan options.

Second visit (January 2017) with two friends:
My friend enjoyed the mushroom soup. There was a spicy melted cheese starter that was good. The pasta trio main course was served a little cold - reasonable quality but to be honest I'd eaten better vegetarian pasta dishes in the local Italian restaurants earlier in the week. The croquetas were only average - and it seems strange that they come with rice and pastry on the side. Overall, a nice enough place with friendly staff and an extensive selection of dishes but the food is okay (not amazing).

Updated from previous review on 2016-09-17

Great food, served in a fantastic location in Malaga. Great for ambience, service and above all the food choice was varied and very tasty.

He estado unos días en Málaga, he comido allí y debo decir que estoy muy satisfecha. El restaurante tiene una bonita decoración, está situado en un callejón peatonal junto al impresionante teatro romano y te puedes sentar en la terraza cuando el tiempo acompaña. El personal es atento, la comida abundante y deliciosa y el precio razonable. Repetiré en mi próxima visita a Málaga.
Updated from previous review on Thursday April 07, 2016

Nice place. Big portions. Very friendly staff, even discernable with a very Large language gap. When in Malaga I would definetly go back there!

Excelente trato, ambiente y comida. Muy sabrosos platos. Recomiendo siempre.

Great vegetarian option in Malaga. Outside seating in a quite side alley. The paella with cauliflower was a great starter. The tomato empanada's were a tasteful main, sided by a fresh salad, spinach cake and vegetable curry. All in all, a lot of tastes that even might seduce the non-vegetarians.

A note of explanation: I've been in Malaga for a long weekend with my girlfriend with the intention to eat at the four vegan/vegetarian places of the city. Unfortunately one was closed, therefore we managed to eat at (in order of preference): Cañadú, El Piano (but it was "almost closed", see below), and El vegetariano del Alcazabilla.

The food at the El vegetariano del Alcazabilla is good, but really heavy. Most stuff is fried (especially the vegan options!), and the vegetarian dishes are chock-full of cheese (and probably fried)... my suggestion is to avoid el plato combinado, which is certainly too much for one person. Just pick one thing, and it will fill you completely.

As most of the previous reviews, I would rate this place 3.5, but I can't, so I will give it 4 just for the friendly stuff and for the colourful place, which is pleasant.

As for the prices, with one dish only you will spend as with the menu del día at Cañadú, but you will still go away full.

Oh sweet jesus, the homemade bread and dip that they give you for free before you place your order was simply amazing. It was the tastiest part of our meal.
Very friendly staff too.

Slightly more expensive than the other options around Málaga.

Probaly the worst vegetarian place Iv been to, limited vegan choices. I ended up getting the seitan burger that was really greasy and salty and smelt like sweat that came rice!?! A pasty and grilled veg that all just tasted too weird together

Very nice place to eat with awesome interior relaxing music and friendly staff. Offers menu in four languages which comes useful to those not fluent in Spanish. Also, Tartitas de zanahoria are tremendous.

It's a cute restaurant and I really love the ambiance. The food was delicious and the prices are similar to non veggie restaurants. The employees are attentive and friendly. There is a mixed vegan plate. I chose a plate and I was told they could also put it on the mixed vegan plate. It means, we could mostly assemble our own vegan plate. It was great!

Es un restaurante muy bonito y me encanta el ambiente. La comida fue deliciosa y los precios son similar a restaurantes que no son veggie. Los camareros son atentos y amables. Hay un plato vegano mixto. Elegí un plato y me dijo que pudieran ponerlo en el plato mixto vegano. Significa que se puede casi combinar su propio plato vegano. Fue genial!

Es ist ein süßes Restaurant und ich liebe das Ambiente. Das Essen war köstlich und die Preise gleichen denen nicht vegetarischer Restaurants. Die Mitarbeiter sind aufmerksam und freundlich. Es gibt eine gemischte vegane Platte. Ich entschied mich für ein veganes Gericht und mir wurde gesagt, sie könnten dieses auch zur gemischten veganen Platte geben. Bedeutet, man kann sich die vegane Platte weitgehend selbst zusammenstellen. Es war großartig! :)

I went there at the end of September 2013. The staff was friendly and the four language menu available facilitates the communication. I did not mention that I was vegan but because I ordered only vegan food (which is clearly indicated on the menu), the owner brought me a vegan pâté as an appetizer with beautiful breads and precised me it was vegan. I appreciated. I took the vegan paella which was tasty, and then the grilled seitan with fried vegetables. Vegetables were good but I didn't like so much the seitan whose texture was strange and not very nice. Beside that, the restaurant is pleasant and very well located. Prices are reasonnable and portions are ok. Sadly, there was no vegan desserts.

Concluding, it's not an exceptionnal restaurant but it is really fair in the whole.

We stumbled upon this restaurant and were excited by both the atmosphere, the lovely view of the Alcazaba, and the very friendly waiter. The food, however, was a disappointment to everyone in our party of 5. The only thing really enjoyed were the spinach bonuelos. We were disappointed since we had passed up the Canadu for this. Should have stayed with the tried and true.

The vegan mushroom dish is excellent, but the vegan choices are relatively limited. If you are veggie, then there is an extensive menu that looks fantastic. If you are vegan, you'll need to love seitan if you want the widest selection.

Better than average but not, in my view, the best place for vegans. You have to go and support places like this, though, and encourage change and improvement. Places like this, however, will get reduced ratings from the very picky, so go judge for yourself. I wanted to give it 3.5 stars as it is better than fair but not quite 'very good' for vegans.

On both occasions we visited this place, they did not open at the specified time and we were kept waiting for a short while.

The soup and bread were very tasty and nourishing, and juices very good, but pretty much everything else we tried had either too much cream and cheese, or was deep fried. Sides were lackluster. Not a good place if you're trying to eat healthy....but to be fair, we had difficulty finding light, healthy options in the tourist area of Malaga in general.

Service was fine - the staff was friendly and pleasant. They had a detailed English menu, so the fact that we speak no Spanish and the staff spoke almost no English did not really affect our experience.

I didn't think it was difficult to find, because the restaurant has a sign on Calle Alcazabilla.

We tried to make a reservation, but the waiter didn't speak any English. I tried to make my point, and just when I thought we was getting a pen to make a note, we just walked away!

Still, we came back to have lunch and we didn't regret it because the food was wonderful. I had an endive salad with blue cheese, apple and an amazing salad dressing. We also had some vegetarian croquettes with zucchini quiche and carrots. Menu is in Engelish.
I would certainly come back.

Since it's not too easy to find good vegetarian food in Malaga, I was fairly happy when we discovered this place. It's in a good location and the restaurant itself is nice too. For my taste there was a bit too much seitan on the menu and not enough vegetable based dishes. Besides this place is rather short on vegan options, but that generally seems to be a problem in Spain. The food was rather good though, so I'd give 3.5 stars if i could.

We went here mainly because it is very close to the Alcazaba where we happened to be when we were in the lunch-mood. The location is great, and the place looks very nice. We were thinking to go for the menu del dia for 7 euros, but it turned out it was with eggs. The waiter was seeming a bit annoyed when we asked about it, and just said that it was a lacto-ovo restaurant, so usually the menu del dia was with eggs. We had to choose from the general menu which was a bit expensive, and had very few vegan options. Almost all the vegan plates were seitan in some way. We ended up with one paella that was very nice (but small as is only a starter) and one vegan mixed plate which was consisting of different kind of deep fried seitan with some salad and rice. A bit dissapointing the whole thing, doubt I will come here again (is probably an ok place if you eat eggs).

I went to El Vegetariano because it was recommended to me by a friend from Malaga. Unfortunately, what is true for Andalusian food in general (often very heavy and fatty) is true for their vegan food too, especially in this place. I had the vegan mix plate which was basically meat-substitutes, deep fried, with 3 sides that weren't abundant with (fresh) vegetables either. I would probably go there again but try something different.

Arrived at this restaurant up a dirty backstreet. Sat down and waited 10 minutes just to get a menu. Another 15 minutes later we were finally asked to order - i'd like to point out the place was not packed. The food came fairly quick (around 10-15 min wait) for lunch. We didn't see a "lunch menu" and weren't offered one so not sure if one still exists. The food was good, ordered veggie piella, seitan burger, carrot burger and seitan kebabs which were excellent. I was impressed with the food and was thinking the place had redeemed itself after such long waiting periods. HOWEVER, what really took the biscuit was having to wait ONE hour for the bill. We saw people arrive after us, they were served promptly and had the bills taken to them yet we were made to wait for no reason. In the end we had to get up and go inside and ask to pay. They were extremely moody, very poor service (the worst service ive ever experienced on all my travels) and had a bad attitude problem. They flung the bill at us, we paid and will vow to never return. Overall, an extremely bad experience let down by the owners.

This was the only place I found in Malaga that I could have a veggie paella. We went back to this restaurant twice in our four day trip. Bright, colourful and very Spanish, after sitting down to many places that only offered a few veggie tapas (traditional Spanish tapas aren't so veggie) it was overwhelming at the huge menu we were offered here. And everyone there was so friendly. Loved this place!!!

A very nice restaurant! We went there twice during our Malaga stay because of the nice food and atmosphere. The dishes were delicious, the staff was nice and the location of the restaurant is good. You should definitely go there if you're in Malaga!

This restaurant is in a very convenient location for tourists, steps from the Teatro Romano.
There is an extensive menu with entries listed in English.
Cozy atmosphere with indoor and outdoor seating to relax and enjoy some "ecological" beer or wine.
I had a great salad- sad looking guac on top but great combination- see the photo! (Served with odd bread basket of white bread, integral bread, and crunchy breadsticks)
My carrot-apple juice was thick and pulpy, delicious!

I went there twice with my friend, at lunchtime and in the evening. At lunch time we took menu del dia (~8-9 €), which contained starter, main dish, dessert and bread. I don't remember the starters anymore, (telling they were ok but nothing special). There were two options for main to choose, other was pasta.. can't remember anymore. Both were ok. For dessert they gave us kefir(?, without asking) - we had had it few times before, but I have to admit that this was the best one, served with strawberry. Water was pretty expensive, but I guess that's not rare.

In the eveningh I took a seitan dish. I don't remember the spanish name of the dish (because I didn't understand it at the first place), but it was excellent. The seitan was served on a stake. My friend had meatballs of seitan, which were good too. I took apple juice which was good but I'd say not worth the price. The funny thing with the juice was that it was so thick that the straw didn't fall no matter which position you put it :D

Waitres' (both men, other was around 30 and the other around 20) didn't speak english neither at lunch nor at dinner. For us this wasn't a big problem, since we know a little spanish. The other not so nice thing was that the younger water was smoking with two women (of whom I'm not sure whether they were staff or not) at the table near us...

We had lunch here at around 3:30pm on a weekday, and there was plenty of seating. The decor inside is really interesting, previous customers had scribbled messages on the walls. It's all very cute.

I had mixed vegan plate (12,90 euros) which was a bit of everything. It included small portions of salad, saffron rice with artichokes, a ratatouille type stew, samosa, bhaji-type fried vegetables, and some very yummy spinach croquettes.

My best friend had a Brocheta de la Casa (11,90 euros) which was a mixed plate with a bit of many of their most popular lacto-ovo dishes.

Everything tasted very nice, and the portions were generous. I can't remember what fresh juice I had, but do remember that it was huge and sooo good.

The waiter was friendly and chatty, and made a point to tell me that the creamy looking sauce on my plate was vegan, which was very nice of him.

They let the cutest stray cat hang around and sleep on one of their patio chairs, bless!

So luckily before we sat down I asked the guy if he can prepare any of their vegan dishes w/o oil and he told us no we have no food for you all our vegan food is deap fried... what the heck is the point of a vegan selection if its all fried? so frustrating...

We had great food with good service and real value for money.

it's always an added bonus to note that your intended veg resto was in your travel guidebook all along... came here in november, & was a little chilly inside,but the hot food & mustard yellow walls helped warm (as the kindness of the staff). cute little corner, near the Roman Theatre. Enligh menu. smoking permitted. had some tasty food: melted, herbed provolone (the media was huge even for 2 people); seitan brochettes with different fillings; uniquely-made cannelloni & spinach with almonds & a bolognese sauce. huge portions of everything. delicious sangria with huge fruit chunks. plain bread with no butter, oil, or plates. 15 euro & up. Credit card OK.

I visited this restaurant twice last week (august 2008), when I was on holiday in Malaga for 3 day's. If it wouldn't have been closed on Sunday I would have eaten there every day, because I loved this restaurant. It has a wide variety of vegetarian en vegan plates and also whole wheat pasta en fresh juices. The food was excellent and original. You also get really nice vegetables, rice and a tortilla with your mean dish. There was a friendly staff, English menu, nice terrace and good location.
I would like to have a restaurant like this in my hometown!

We really enjoyed the lunch we had here. It was original, freshly prepared and tasty. The service was great and the seating terrace cool on a really hot day. A place you can linger in and enjoy the menu del dia or original a la carte. We will go again!

Loved this place. Great atmosphere, prices, selection and service. Had a croquette sampler with non-alcoholic Sangria. Next time I visit Malaga I will stay near this restaurant. One of the best vegetarian restaurants I've tried in the past 20 years.