Gammarus

Gammarus is what happens when a team born and raised on this coast builds the club they think their own cove deserves. It stands directly on the sand at Cala Canyelles, the sheltered bay with a small marina hidden between Lloret de Mar and Tossa de Mar, and it splits into three storeys of intent: a proper restaurant of rice dishes, fish and seafood with a big terrace, the barefoot La Platgeta bar among the palms with tapas, signature cocktails and live music, and above it all an adults only rooftop with a heated pool, sunbeds and its own bar looking down the length of the cove.

On our Costa Brava club directory we call this coast a cove and kitchen coast rather than a daybed coast, and rank Gammarus first on it. What sets the place apart in a genre fond of vagueness is candour: the club publishes its rooftop rate, lists exactly what the money includes, and even diagrams where you may park. This page holds it to its own arithmetic.

Choose your level before you choose your date, because Gammarus is really three venues stacked by mood. The restaurant is the anchor and arguably the point: local rice dishes and seafood cooked in homage to the fishermen who spread their nets on this exact beach within living memory, served on aged wood under coir awnings. La Platgeta below is the loose day, feet in the sand, tapas and a cocktail while live music plays, children and even the dog welcome. The rooftop is the indulgence, and an unusually honest one, a heated pool, an exclusive bar and that 90 euro bed for two with its contents itemised like a tasting menu.

The concierge sums deserve a paragraph, because 45 euros a head for the rooftop is roughly what a single unremarkable daybed costs at the fashionable clubs down the coast in Marbella, and here it arrives with two cocktails, towels, lockers and the whole restaurant carte sent upstairs. Exclusivity on the Costa Brava turns out to cost less than a good lunch, mostly because this coast never learned to charge for the scenery.

The shortfalls are the small print of the same virtues. The rooftop’s door closes to newcomers at two, no specific bed can be held, and the level is strictly for adults, so it rewards planners and punishes the spontaneous afternoon. The cove is pedestrian past the port bollard, which keeps it lovely and makes arrival a small logistics exercise. And anyone wanting DJs and bottle sparklers should be honest with themselves and fly south: the loudest thing here at sunset is usually the water.

Josep Pla, the great chronicler of this coast, called Canyelles a wonderful, long, wide beach with a dazzling light, and the description still holds. It is the only cove of consequence between the two big towns, sheltered enough for its little marina of launches, with typically clear water and pine headlands on either side. It keeps a more local temperature than the long urban sands of Lloret de Mar to the south, and pairs naturally with an afternoon in the walled old town above Tossa de Mar to the north.

From Lloret take the coast road towards Tossa, turn at the Canyelles exit and drop towards the marina until the port bollard, beyond which only pedestrians and bikes continue, the club sits to the right beside the sand. Parking is the one puzzle, and the club solves it in four pieces: a metered blue zone about 50 metres out, a second unpaved blue zone at 150 metres, a paved lot 800 metres up the hill, and a free lot 1.3 kilometres away reserved for guests with reservations, linked by a continuous shuttle from 11 to 7. Tables book through the club’s own online system or by phone, and a summer weekend lunch without one is a gamble. The rooftop cannot be pre allocated, so arrive inside the morning window and let the staff seat you.

If you would rather have the day arranged before you drive out, send your date and party size through the form below. We pass the enquiry to Gammarus to confirm availability, the current rooftop arrangement and a table for your date, and it costs you nothing.