Gibraltar
Chickpea-flour calentita, British pubs beside Spanish tapas — a whole Mediterranean crossroads on one Rock.
Gibraltar packs an improbable number of cuisines onto one peninsula. The national dish is calentita, an oven-baked, custardy chickpea-flour bread brought by Genoese settlers — a close cousin of Ligurian farinata — that even lends its name to the territory's street-food festival. Around it sits a genuinely mixed 'Llanito' table: rosto pasta bakes, torta de acelga chard pie at Easter, Maltese-style beef rolitos, and custard-filled japonesa doughnuts.
The open border with La Línea means British pubs pouring cask ale and fish and chips sit right beside Spanish tapas bars and Mediterranean seafood, with Moroccan tagines from a long-settled community folded in. Grab a calentita by the slice, work Main Street's traditional pubs, then cross to the harbourfront at Ocean Village. Eat here and you're tasting six cultures at once — under the gaze of the Barbary macaques.
- Calentita (baked chickpea-flour bread)
- Panissa (fried chickpea paste)
- Rosto (Gibraltarian pasta bake)
- Torta de acelga (chard pie)
- Rolitos (stuffed beef olives)
- Japonesa (cream-filled doughnut)
- Fish and chips
