Bodega Santa Bárbara, the outside table in Villa de Teguise

Villa de Teguise is visited by day, when the coaches pull up outside the church and the Sunday market fills the squares. But the hour when the old capital most resembles itself comes later, once the groups have gone: the stone lanes keep their outdoor tables, and one set belongs to the Bodega Santa Bárbara.

It stands at Calle de la Cruz 5, a few steps off the main square, in a low white house with its name hand-painted on the wall. Outside, five or six wooden tables, a big cactus in the corner and the parasols. Inside, a narrow room with the bar at the back, dark tiled floor and wooden shutters: the older Teguise, the one the main streets have largely lost.

What you eat

It is a bodega, so you order to share. The board carries hummus, flan de la huerta, carrilleras ibéricas — pork cheeks cooked slowly until a spoon will cut them — and the fish of the day, depending on what came in. Anyone who does not eat meat does well here: the vegetable half of the menu is not a token gesture, it is genuinely half the list, and on an island where vegetarian often means mixed salad that is worth saying.

Expect €20 to €30 a head, wine included. And the wine is why the place is called a bodega: the list looks to the island's own producers, the La Geria growers who work malvasía in pits dug in the lapilli, rather than stopping at the two labels found everywhere.

Before you go

The house is small and the outside tables are few: at weekends and on market nights it is worth calling ahead, on 690 82 45 01. In Teguise you park in the open areas at the edge of the village and walk in, as the old centre is closed to cars. On Sunday, market day, arriving early is the only way to get a table.