You can eat well in plenty of places in Cadaqués, but in a few of them you also eat history. These are the houses that have stayed with the same family for decades: El Marítim since 1935, Boia Nit since 1946, Bar Meliton since 1957, Es Baluard since 1967, Casa Anita since 1969. Places that saw Dalí, Duchamp, Kirk Douglas, or García Márquez come through, and where you're still served by someone whose surname is on the business. This is a guide to choosing a table by the history behind it, which in this village is as valid a criterion as the menu.
Casa Anita: the table is shared
On Carrer Miquel Rosset 16, Casa Anita has run since 1969 on a system that would terrify any consultant: no fixed menu, and tables shared with strangers. Juanito runs the dining room and Maria the kitchen, with homemade desserts as their signature, and you sit wherever there's room and eat whatever's on that day.
Dalí came through here, as he did through nearly everything good in this village, but what makes the place special isn't the anecdote: it's that half a century later the format is still intact. Coming in alone and leaving having talked to half the table is part of the price, in the best sense.
Es Baluard: eating inside the wall
Es Baluard opened in 1967, the work of Quimet Seriñana and Maria Torrents, and today it's run by their son Josep Seriñana and Fanni Puig. The building is part of the village's old wall, with historic vaulted ceilings and views over the bay, and the house dish is the fish suquet, this coast's classic seafood stew.
It's hard to ask for more coherence: a fishermen's recipe, cooked by the second generation of a village family, inside the stone that once defended Cadaqués. There are restaurants with better views in the world; with more context, very few.
El Marítim: ninety years facing the beach
The elder statesman is El Marítim, founded in 1935 by Pere Figueras facing the main beach, today run by the fourth generation — Georgina and Pere. The list of famous diners is dizzying: Dalí, Duchamp, Kirk Douglas, Umberto Eco, García Márquez. The menu, on the other hand, hasn't lost its bearings: paella, rice dishes, fresh fish.
Ninety years on the front line of a beach that's seen everything come and go, without changing family or trade. Sitting on its terrace means occupying, quite literally, the same spot from which several generations have watched this bay.
Boia Nit and Meliton: the bars where the village meets
For a drink, the history continues. Boia Nit, on the main beach, has existed since 1946 and is today home to mixologist Manel Vehí, with craft cocktails in a space whose memory connects to the years of Dalí and Duchamp. And Bar Meliton, since 1957, has been the classic meeting point for the village's artistic community.
They're two ways of ending the day in the same stretch of village: skilled cocktail-making and the bar of always. Between the two there's almost a century of conversations, card games, and chats that plenty of museums would envy.
And two very Cadaqués oddities
Two more houses remain that could only exist here. Es Grec is the village's only Greek restaurant, and its origin traces back to a group of Greek divers who arrived in Cadaqués during the coral-hunting era: the menu is, at heart, the trace of a migration. And Juan's family bodega does away with a menu and with conventional tables — long benches, and that's it — Juan decides what you eat.
Add the Xiringito de la Mei, a local institution that opens only four months a year, and you have the full picture: a small village where every eating house has a story that doesn't fit in a star rating.