Santabar

Dani Frías and cooking without solemnity

Dani Frías does not need Santabar to prove his craft. La Ereta has spent years building its own reading of Alicantian cooking, with a traditional base, contemporary technique and a setting that almost forces any conversation toward the view before reaching the food. But Santabar reveals another side of the way he cooks: the less solemn side, the more direct side, the one that can be eaten with a paper napkin and a beer nearby.

That does not mean lowering the standard. It means shifting register. The difference matters. At Santabar, Frías does not try to replicate gastronomic cooking in a cheap format. He does something more intelligent: he takes popular dishes — croquetas, ensaladilla, tortilla, calamari sandwich, buñuelos, rotisserie chicken — and updates them from flavour, technique and a certain irony.

There are chefs who lose precision when they move into informal territory. Here the opposite happens. Santabar is interesting precisely because behind its apparent simplicity is a mind accustomed to thinking about cooking with structure. Informality does not appear as an excuse to do things carelessly, but as a different way of serving them.

The neighbourhood bar brought up to date

The house describes itself as "a traditional neighbourhood bar brought up to date." The phrase works because it does not try to seem more sophisticated than necessary. Santabar is not understood through luxury, but through familiarity. You recognise almost everything on the menu before ordering it. The point is that when it arrives at the table, much of it is not quite what you expected.

The ensaladilla, croquetas, bravas, tortilla and calamari sandwich belong to a shared popular imagination. They are dishes with collective memory, dishes that everyone believes they know. That is why touching them carries a certain risk. Intervene too much and they lose their meaning. Leave them entirely untouched and they risk becoming routine. Santabar navigates that middle point: updating without erasing.

The result is an agreeable, recognizable and quite Alicantian cooking in the way it understands pleasure. It does not ask for silence. It does not demand reverence. It lends itself to sharing. It has the rhythm of a long table, of a meal that stretches, of a bar that does not want to be a museum.

Santa Faz and Bazán: two ways to reach the same bar

The original Santabar is in Santa Faz, on Calle San Diego, halfway between Alicante and San Juan. That location is not a minor detail. Facing the monastery, outside the obvious centre, the place retains something of a nearby destination bar: you go because you feel like it, because you know it, because someone recommended it or because you have already understood the point.

The arrival at Bazán, in the heart of Alicante, changes the context without changing the idea. There, Santabar enters a different circulation: quick lunches, afternoon eating, visitors, office workers, improvised plans and a city that moves faster. The challenge is to maintain the same spirit in a more exposed setting.

The fact that the model can transfer without entirely losing its character says quite a lot. Santabar does not depend solely on a charming location or the appeal of the concept. It depends on a recognizable menu, solid execution and a tone that mixes the popular with the properly cooked. That is harder to replicate than it looks.

A menu of classics with a second reading

The Santabar menu has one clear virtue: it reads easily. Pa amb oli, ensaladilla, ajoblanco, coca amb tonyina, filled churro, buñuelos, croquetas, bravas, tortilla, sandwiches, rotisserie chicken. There is no need to study it too hard. Nor does everything need an accompanying explanation.

But beneath that simplicity there is a second reading. The ajoblanco sits alongside black garlic and anchovies. The bravas come with vermouth. The Alicantian coca enters the language of the bar. The chicken is served with a house sauce. The croquetas have competed at national gastronomic level. Popular cooking remains recognizable, but a twist is added.

That is the key to the place. Santabar does not dismiss the traditional bar; it knows it well enough to handle it with some freedom. The difference between updating and caricaturing lies in the touch. Here, at least in its best version, the touch is measured quite well.

Eating well without getting serious

Santabar works because it understands something that is sometimes forgotten: eating informally should not mean eating worse. Too many bars shelter behind apparent simplicity to serve lazy dishes. There are also too many places that turn informality into a calculated aesthetic — all rough wood, soft neon and very little real cooking.

Santabar is somewhere else. It is cheerful, direct, mildly irreverent in tone, but not empty. It has the energy of a bar where you can order a round, share plates and not worry about whether the experience is being sufficiently gastronomic. It is, but it does not need reminding every five minutes.

The Solete Repsol sits well with that reading. This is not a luxury table or a ceremonial restaurant, but an appetizing, accessible and characterful place. A recommendation that is not based on exclusivity, but on something more useful: the food is good, the drinking is easy and you want to come back.

When to go and what to order

Santabar works for many occasions, which explains part of its success. It can work for an informal lunch, for going with friends, for a relaxed dinner, for a bite in the centre or for a trip to Santa Faz with a ready-made excuse. It is not a restaurant for a quiet experience or for seeking miniature haute cuisine. It is a bar designed for enjoyment without putting on airs.

For a first visit, the right move is to order several dishes for the table. The ensaladilla, croquetas, bravas with vermouth, a buñuelo or two, the tortilla if available and the calamari sandwich help you understand the tone of the house. The daily chalkboard is also worth a look; that is usually where the daily pulse of the place shows.

Drink does not need to be complicated. Wine, beer, vermouth or whatever the table calls for, without drama. Santabar does not require an academic pairing. It asks for hunger, company and a certain willingness to accept that a bar can be very serious without looking like it.

Final verdict

Santabar deserves a place in a guide to Alicante because it represents an intelligent way of updating the popular bar. Not from empty nostalgia nor from tourist-facing design, but from cooking. Dani Frías understands that a croqueta, an ensaladilla or a calamari sandwich can remain what they are and still have a new reading.

Its value lies in that tension: informality and judgment, bar and technique, humour and craft. Santabar does not compete with La Ereta or try to turn tapas into a reduced version of haute cuisine. It does something more necessary: it shows that the everyday bar can also be the work of a serious gastronomic mind.

It is not for anyone looking for solemnity, silence or dishes that need explaining before being eaten. It is for anyone who wants a real bar, but a better-made one. And in Alicante, that makes quite a lot of sense.