Bibo Tarifa Beach House Restaurant by Dani Garcia |
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BiBo Tarifa Beach House Restaurant
This contemporary restaurant at Valdevaqueros beach by three-Michelin-starred chef Dani Garcia, who is based in Marbella, opened on eve of San Juan; 23rd June 2019.
The relaxed dining room has upbeat and chill/out music, while attentive waiting staff are dressed in Hawaiian-style beach shirts featuring red and pink hibiscus, palm leaves and frangipani.
A chill-out terrace in front of the restaurant features loungers and sunbeds for beach-goers. The cocktail menu includes Brownie Daiquiri, Smoked Pumpkin Whisky Sour, and non- alcoholic Bibo Detox Agave Syrup, with prices from 9€ to 14€.
A boardwalk leads from the terrace down to the beach, where there's garden lounge area.
The menu is well presented in a Bibo book with 1950s imagery of surfboard glamour (downloadable as a PDF). Starters include Andalucian dishes with a twist - cherry gazpacho, salmorejo, Conil tomato salad, and guacamole prepared at the table with stone mortar and pestle. As a main you can choose from a selection of almadraba tuna dishes, grilled fish of the day served with Tarifa style potatoes, and Japanese-style raw fish. There is also the famous Dani Garcia Bull Burger.
The restaurant opened 25th May for the Summer 2022 season until September. Table reservations are highly recommended for dining (13.00 to 16.30 hrs and 19.30 to 22.45 hrs); they can be made online and there is also an official waiting list. In theory a few tables were non-reservable for walk-ins on a first-come first-served basis.
The restaurant is reasonable priced, at around 30€ to 50€ a head.
Background to BiBo's Tarifa location
Dani Garcia's announcement in February 2019 that he was opening a new BiBo Restaurant in Tarifa caused a bit of a stir. His expansion plans are well known, as a solid brand promoted by his many media and conference appearances worldwide. However, a chiringuito (beach bar) in Tarifa located close to the beach within a Natural Park (Parque Natural del Estrecho) gave rise to cynical calls that it was impossible to do this legally.
Dani defended his position in the Spanish press, saying that he ‘would not do anything illegal and that all the necessary permissions are in place'. By the time work had started on the albero stone car park and the wooden demountable structure in April 2019, the press reported the ‘Salvemos Valdevaqueros' petition on change.org had an impressive 150,000 signatures. However, this petition was an update of a 2017 one, and by opening date, it had 180,000 signatures. This suggests that 30,000 is a more accurate number.
It appears that Dani had taken the expensive legal route for BiBo Tarifa, with the support of Tarifa's mayor. This official points out that all technical reports by all Tarifa Town Hall departments were favourable. The project also has the green light from the environment department of the Junta de Andalucia.
It's a restaurant not a chiringuito, since it is not located on public domain coastal land, but is located on private land which for many years has been ‘illegally' occupied by motorhomes (migrated to the other side of the N-340 coast road opposite Camping Tarifa), and, on a daily basis, as a large summer 'volunteer-run' car park for beach-goers.
The restaurant will feature a classroom and information boards about the park and its wildlife, plus has its own surf school. The services have been laid in specially prepared ducts and the outbound kitchen and latrine waste is also piped well away and properly stored for tanker removal. A number of small environment projects are planned and Bibo Tarifa points out that their footprint will be far better than the previous uncontrolled land use, where the waste from the motorhome dwellers. and buried undesirables, have already damaged wildlife on the site, especially near the stream.
The action group Salvemos Valdevaqueros had denounced the project to the crown prosecutor, and their Facebook page contains many details of alleged minor environmental and archaeological infractions. The main complaint is that project's environmental impact assessment does not meet the very strict requirements to ‘prove the absence of impact on the biodiversity that inhabits the site' for the portion of the site that has Red Natura 2000 status.
Legal or illegal, the final verdict will lie some years ahead. At least Dani Garcia appears to have tried harder to do the right thing than any predecessor.
Contact
Tel:956 926 422
Web: grupodanigarcia.com
Location
Address: Carretera CN-340, Km. 76,6 Tarifa, Cádiz
Details: Entrance from Casas de Porras and not Hotel Valdevaqueros. Coming from Tarifa or Costa del Sol, rather than turning left across the traffic, continue to the Punta Paloma A-2325 road, turn round here and turn right into Casas de Porras.
