[Los Cristianos, Tenerife] Abordo

I’m not sure which we enjoyed most about Abordo – the food or the five older guys singing and playing traditional Spanish music. The heads-up about the seafood here had come via Tripadvisor’s Tenerife forum and that was what had brought us. . The entertainment was an excellent bonus.

The menu is almost entirely seafood, with a handful of meat dishes thrown in. It seemed the place to have paella. The server advised it would take a while (in itself a good thing – you know it’s not just being bunged in the microwave) and suggested we might like something to nibble on while we waited. So, we got an aperitif, a bowl of olives and a plate of seafood croquettes that came with a sort of tartare sauce for dunking them in.

The paella, when it arrived, was an enormous affair. It would have easily have fed three, all with seconds. And, much as the two of us tried, there was no way we could finish it. Just as it should be, the rice was the most flavoursome bit, although no soccarat – the bit at the bottom of the pan where the rice has gone nice and crusty. There were mussels, clams, bits of white fish, king prawns that needed shelling, as well as generous quantities of pork and chicken, So tasty.

After a bit of a breather, we found there was still room for dessert. We’d heard one of the servers describe the night’s special to another table. So we ordered one to share (something I don’t remember us doing outside of trips to America). It was a lightly flavoured mousse, made using the local gofio flour. That was topped with a heavy drizzle of local honey, together with chopped almonds and dried fruit. The honey turned it into a very sweet affair. Perhaps overly so, as we both said we could never have managed it on our own. We rounded off with excellent coffee.

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