El Candado Golf

Javier Hernández takes the orders himself at El Candado Golf, and reads out whatever he found at the market that morning.

Why go

Hernández opened the room in 2012 as his own project, inside the Real Club El Candado on the eastern edge of the city, in a round building put up in the late 1960s.1 3 A small bar sits by the door, and the dining room behind it holds seven tables with linen on them, the course through the windows and terraces outside.1 The Academia Gastronómica de Málaga named him the province's best cook in 2014, after years at Monte Sancha, Entremares, Lepanto and Limonar 40.1 Carlos Sanz runs the dining room.3

The kitchen was built around rice, with the ovens to match. The card runs to more than a dozen, mostly dry in the pan, plus two fideuás (the same dish made with short noodles) and two cooked soupy in the pot.1 4 Dani Carnero sends people out here. His order starts with the ensaladilla, goes on to the gazpachuelo and finishes on a rice, and of the rice he says: He nails it.4

Going out there is a journey, and the only published review of this kitchen dates from 2018. Go for the soup and the rice.

Order this / avoid

Order: the gazpachuelo, Málaga's warm fish soup bound with mayonnaise. Julia Pérez Lozano ate it in 2018: It is, without doubt, the best dish on the menu. Nobody should leave the restaurant without trying it, since it is not easy to find one of this standard. It arrives in an earthenware casserole, and Hernández explained it to her at the table: fish stock, mayonnaise, lightly cooked white fish (monkfish in this case), peeled raw Málaga prawns that cook in the heat of the soup, boiled potatoes, boiled rice, salt and lemon added at the last moment for freshness.1
Order: the ensaladilla rusa, the Spanish potato and mayonnaise salad, which is the dish the house is known for. At Candado Golf the potato dominates and is at its point, neither too broken down nor too whole, with a delicious but gentle mayonnaise, and good pieces of bonito on top.1 3
Order: a rice, and if you want one cooked soupy in the pot, take the lobster. The others named are the a banda (rice cooked in fish stock and served apart from it) with chistorra sausage, the black with squid ink, and the presa ibérica, the pig's shoulder cut, with boletus.4
Order: the gambas de Málaga al pil pil, which is Málaga's own name for garlic prawns, a little spicy, with exactly the right amount of oil.1
Avoid: the raw anchovy toast with sweet tomato and cane honey. Pérez Lozano, 2018: The whole thing does not quite work and the anchovy gets lost between the excessive sweetness of the tomato and the honey. The toast is too thick for the thin fillet of fish.1
Avoid: the blue cheese cake with mango jam, which came out served excessively cold on the same visit.1
Drink: a Málaga red off the short list, Capuchinas Viejas or Pago del Espino, or a sherry, which the house pours by the glass and the bottle.1

What locals & experts say

Gastroactitud (2018): Julia Pérez Lozano on the moment the cook leaves the kitchen: And so you reach the culminating moment of the meal, where the cook's hand shows, and at that moment he comes out of the kitchen into the dining room, proud (and rightly so), to give the gazpachuelo the importance it deserves. She is cooler about the first half of the meal: Pleasant starters, all of them, but they do not move you.1
Gastroactitud on the rices (2018): given that there is not much rice competition in the area, along with those Dani García's team makes at Lobito de Mar (Marbella), they are the best you can eat in the province.1
Dani Carnero (2023): the Michelin-starred cook of Kaleja and La Cosmopolita, on Hernández's rice: He nails it.4
Ignacio Luque, Academia Gastronómica de Málaga: In the neighborhoods, not so close to hand, there is also good cooking, as at the Club de Golf de El Candado where one of the best chefs is, Javier Hernández.5
Award: recommended by Guía Repsol in the 2025 Soles edition, without a Sol.6

Good to know

Price: 60 euros a head in October 2023.2
Timing: lunch is the meal here. The house serves dinner only at the weekend and shuts on Monday.1 2
Booking: seven tables, so call ahead. The number is 952 29 93 41.1
Getting in: the restaurant sits inside a private club, and I haven't found anything that says whether you need to be a member to book. A critic, a national list and a starred chef have all eaten here.
Where: Urbanización El Candado, Calle Golf 2, on the eastern side of Málaga.3 5

Verdict

could-visit — Javier Hernández opened this seven-table room in the golf club in 2012 and cooks the rices himself, more than a dozen of them, mostly dry in the pan. The gazpachuelo is the reason to make the drive: fish stock, mayonnaise, lightly cooked monkfish and raw Málaga prawns that cook in the heat of the bowl, carried out of the kitchen by the man who made it. Dani Carnero starts with the ensaladilla, goes to the gazpachuelo and finishes on a rice. Sixty euros a head in October 2023, lunch most days and dinner only at the weekend, and the only published review of this kitchen dates from 2018.