Restaurante Casa del Vino — La Orotava Road Tapas Trail
The hillside road climbing from Puerto de la Cruz toward La Orotava is lined with traditional guachinches — rustic family-run taverns that open only when the household's new wine is ready, serving a handful of homemade dishes alongside the barrel. This is the most authentic and least touristy eating experience in the entire north of Tenerife.
What is a guachinche and what to order
A guachinche (pronounced gwah-CHIN-chay) is a legally defined category of temporary tavern: a wine-growing family opens their home or outbuilding to the public for a few weeks or months each year to sell off their surplus wine, supplemented by simple home-cooked food. Expect rough wooden tables, handwritten menus on a chalkboard and no-frills service — and some of the most honest, delicious food you'll eat on the island.
The menu is always short and always good: papas arrugadas (wrinkled potatoes boiled in heavily salted water) with red and green mojo sauces, carne fiesta (marinated pork), potaje de berros (watercress stew) and fresh goat's cheese with honey. A half-litre jug of house white wine costs around €2–3.
Finding an open guachinche
Guachinches open and close unpredictably based on wine supply, so the best approach is to drive or take the bus up the TF-21 road toward La Orotava and look for handwritten signs reading 'Guachinche Abierto' nailed to gates or telegraph poles — they are rarely more than a few hundred metres off the main road.
Several are clustered in the hamlet of La Vera and the outskirts of La Orotava itself. Locals use the website guachinches.com (in Spanish) to track which ones are currently open. Lunch is the main service; most close by 16:00 and few open for dinner.
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