Lanzarote, Islas Canarias

[erica1]

This was an outlier for me. I had never imagined visiting the Canary Islands, but became intrigued after watching a Jose Andres tv program about Lanzarote. Once I found that there was a weekly Vueling flight from SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA (there are daily flights on RyanAir as well), I decided to book nine days on this, reportedly one of the most interesting and less built-up of the archipelago off the coast of Morocco.

We’ve been here for a few days now and it’s a revelation. The cactus alone would be a draw for ardent gardeners, not to mention the volcanic nature of the island. This is a most fascinating place!

We are based in what is probably one of the most overdeveloped towns on Lanzarote, Puerto del Carmen, which means that we need to drive our rental car, or take a (reasonably priced) taxi to the restaurants we’ve chosen to visit.

All I can say at this early point in our stay is that the volcanic Lanzarote is otherworldly. Like no place I’ve ever visited.

Will return with brief comments on the restaurants we’ve visited so far, which meant weeding out hundreds upon hundreds of tourist-oriented places including an enormous amount of Indian restaurants…(??)

An interesting food note: Many towns on the island have “teleclubs,” dating from an era when television was not ubiquitous on the island. These function more or less as social clubs and welcome both locals and visitors with no frills Canarian dishes. Some receive good local write ups, some not so much, but the point is probably less the quality of the cuisine than the social gathering element.

[erica1]

So far we have had absolutely stellar tasting menu dinners at both PALACIO ICO and the new CESAR LANZAROTE, a stunning new hotel in the former home of the father of Cesar Manrique. We also ate at EL RISCO in Caleta de Famara, which was a tad disappointing.

Lapas (whippets??). (limpets??) were a shellfish that I had thought would be on every menu but we have not yet seen them. This article says that they were once eaten only the adventurous or the hungry!!!

Lapas: el marisco pobre que se convirtió en manjar

[erica1]

PALACIO ICO, TEGUISE

This is a magical town that swept me away even though we were there after dark… I think it would make a lovely base for a visit to Lanzarote. The hotel is charming times ten!

We have mostly given up on after-dark driving, although we have a rental car, very inexpensive on Lanzarote, even for an automatic. So we took a taxi which cost about 35 euro each way from Puerto del Carmen where we are lodging for nine days (at Lani’s Suites). But, be sure to have the restaurant phone for a taxi well before you plan to depart, as most taxis come from the coast and we waited about 45 minutes for ours to arrive.

I will post photos rather than offering long descriptive text. Suffice to say that this must be among the best places to dine on Lanzarote. Although I usually shun tasting menus, I just cannot rave enough, not only about the food but about every detail from the decor of the dining room to each individual element from the chairs to pendant lighting to the artisanal-look tableware…a tremendous amount of thought went into this venture. Our tasting menus cost 80 euros each which was a great value.

Unusual for Spain, they open for dinner about 6pm.

Here are a few photos:

Entrantes: Smashingly delicious! A pair of “toasts,” one composed of pressed rice, crisped on the outside (socarrat) and topped with salmon smoked in Uga. (The salmon comes from Norway) The second, a cube of brioche topped with melting stracciatella topped with shaved almonds and sprouts.

Dining room; chairs remind me of Poltrona Frau, notice beautiful stitching on rear, seatback.

Interior courtyard:

Stracciatella, left, and Uga smoked salmon-topped rice at right:

See creamy rice inside and socarrat on the exterior of photo in foreground:

I was pretty full after these two dishes, but there remained much more to come.

Salmorejo with tiny cubes of papaya and crispy croutons, with an held made from local goat cheese…hand crafted ceramic bowl:

Tuna tartare with radish in salsa of soy and ginger:

[Saregama]

@erica1

an enormous amount of Indian restaurants…(??)

In the story of Sindhi migration, Canary Islands played a small but important...

[erica1]

Thank you so much for posting this.

[Maribel]

Thank you, thank you, erica, for allaying my concern. I now will be looking forward to our stay (I hope) at Palacio Ico in Teguise for the Saborea Lanzarote gastro festival. The hotel looks utterly charming and the food divine.
I’ve emailed the hotel about the festival dates but I’m still awaiting a response.

Salmorejo with papaya, a great combo.

Saregama,
Interesting article.

Have you seen those local ceramic bowls at any shop on the island?

[erica1]

Good. I think you will find it very interesting here and there are certainly many excellent restaurants. I have not seen any ceramics but then, I have not done any shopping because I have not seen any tempting shops in Puerto del Carmen. There is that huge market on Sundays in Teguise, which seems to get mixed reports online; the market area (although deserted when we were there on a Saturday night) is only a couple of blocks from the Palacio Ico. The people at the hotel (and those at César Lanzarote) will know where to find those artisanal crafts. The design at both of these hotels is absolutely stellar. Even the chairs, at César Lanzarote Restaurant, were gorgeous…they looked like woven cotton cords in a subdued greenish/blue color…(although my partner thought they were uncomfortable).

Very different style than that of our hotel in Puerto del Carmen!!!

[Maribel]

I love the chairs at Palacio Ico.

I’ve read so so reviews of the weekly Teguise market.

The Saborea Lanzarote eno-gastro event takes place in old Teguise.
It´s just a 2 day event and free.

Last year some big names were there:
Angel León of Poniente, Paco Pérez of Miramar, the “enfant terrible” Diego Guerrero of DStage, Aitor Arregi of Kai Kaipe, Oriol Castro of Disfrutar, the inimitable Andoni Aduriz, Rodrigo de la Calle of El Invernadero, Roberto Ruiz of Hika (formerly of Frontón of Tolosa, the “bean chef”.

[erica1]

Here are the rest of my photos from our tasting menu dinner at PALACIO ICO. Very highly recommended. They are happy to make substitutions if someone, for example, does not eat raw fish. However, the tasting menu(s) remain the same (I was surprised at this) and there was no change planned for the foreseeable future. BUT the dinner was so good that it would not be a hardship to repeat the same courses a day or three later:

This is the pulpo with red mojo, served to my partner as a substitute for the raw tuna; it was divine! I would have preferred this to my tartar of atun.

The next course was a carabinero which I neglected to photograph. Carabineros (giant red shrimp-like crustacean) are ubiquitous on the island. The ones that were served to us were beautifully cooked; less cooking time than the ones I enjoy in Cadiz province, where they are also found on many menus. But these were much smaller in size that those I’ve become used to at restaurants, for example, on the coast near Barbate.

Cherna, ubiquitous salt-water fish a staple of many island menus; very white and lovely; look at the large flakes; the English translation is “Atlantic wreck fish,” but the fish itself is a lot more alluring than the name implies! Lovely…when in doubt about what to order in a fish restaurant, this is your answer. This was served in a sauce that included corn, coconut and turmeric, with fennel fronds:

The lone meat course was the highlight of the dinner for both of us and among the best dishes we’ve tried on Lanzarote: Pork cheeks, carillera de puerco, incredibly tender meat, beautifully charred on the outsider, with tiny local tomatoes and potatoes. Fantastic dish! Look at the ceramic serving bowls!!

Dessert: A mousse of gofio (signature local flour, usually a mixture of corn and millet) with caramel ice cream and a toasted meringue cookie. As delicious as it looks!!

Our dinners, two persons, with water and one Ron Miel, THE alcoholic drink of the Canary Islands, cost 171 euro and I thought this represented excellent value.

We took RT taxis from Puerto del Carmen; these were about 40 euro each way; the price goes up later into the night.

[Maribel]

About those Lanzarote ceramics, here’s one of the sources on the island.

I just realized that I have those light blue plates in the photo on the top left in the 3rd photo.

La cerámica de Eguzkine desde el corazón de Lanzarote

[Maribel]

While eagerly awaiting erica’s review of SeBe, here’s Eguzkine’s web site:

Eguzkine

I’ll be shopping there in November, I hope!

[erica1]

Maribel I do hope you will get to Ekuzkine!

Yesterday we hired the guy who had collected us at the airport upon our arrival, Christian Pacheco. He is a driver, not a guide, but we enjoyed speaking with him during the short ride to the hotel from the airport (free transfer). Chriatian is a local and speaks good English. We booked him for a five-hour-long tour of the island, a few days later, to three Cesar Manrique sights, a visit to Punta Mujeres with the tidal pools, and a drive along the wine route so that we could see the unique method that the winemakers here compensate for the dry and windy climate by planting the grapes very deep into the lava- enriched soil and using lava rocks to partially surround and protect the young trees. This is a landscape like no other I have seen (Jose Andres concentrated on this during his Lanzarote episode on tv, which I have not been able to find here in Spain).

We returned from our driving tour about 4pm, exhausted, so wanted a quick dinner last night. I also wanted to check out Vinos and More, a tapas restaurant with an attached shop selling local food items. Not so easy to find, but the locals seem to place it “near the Burger King,” and near the Hotel Fariones, about a half an hour’s walk west along the beach avenue from Lani’s Suites.

This was a surprisingly good choice for a light meal. The shop held a small but comprehensive array of food stuffs from Lanzarote, including a small selection of cheese from one of the island’s most well respected cheese makers, Finca de Uga. They had only 4 varieties of their cheese, but I bought two sheep cheeses, first, a semi-cured cheese with pimenton: Rogillo, winner of a slew of awards. The second, a blue named La Plume, also semi cured.

Adjacent to the shop is a bar/restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating area and for once, the clientele here were Spanish. We arrived with no reservation and had to wait a few minutes before being seated but this place was a real find, amidst all the tourist-oriented eating places along the first-line avenue along the beach in Puerto del Carmen. You could have to know where to go; this was not a place you would pass as a walk-in, as it it tucked inside a small piazza at the rear of the Burger King. I asked a local worker where it was and we still continued to wander around, lost, until he caught up with us and guided us to the correct address.

We settled on three dishes and both of us were very pleased with each one; if we had more time, we would return here on the nights when we wanted a more relaxed place that did not require a extensive walk,car or taxi from our hotel:

Vino + - Vino + Lanzarote

Log into Facebook

The waiter suggested serving each of our three dishes, one at a time, and this was prefect:

1. Berenjenas with cane syrup from Friggiliana; a mound of strips of fried eggplant cut like fresh fried potatoes and drizzled with the jarabe; lovely!! (They also had Salmorejo on the menu but my partner did not want cold soup)

2. Hojaldre with creamy white cheese that was partially melted along with spinach; four good sized segments. Excellent!! I would return here just to have another helping.

3. Meatballs (four) made from jamon Iberico, with fried patatas. I had a tiny taste, enough to confirm that these were terrific.

We drank one beer and one Vermut Yzaguirre (each cost 3.50 euro).

The two cheeses, 19 each for just under one kilo rfdftfa were added to our final bill, which totaled 73.oo euro.

This was a good find for us amidst the overwhelmingly foreign Puerta del Carmen:

[Maribel]

Glad you were able to purchase that award-winning cheese from Finca de Uga and that you found a nice, non-touristed place for a casual dinner with locals!!!

If we go in November (although Palacio Ico told me the eno-gastro festival may be in Sept), I’ll email you for Cristián Pacheco´s contact number. That was a very smart idea to hire him for a 5-hour island tour. We really want to see La Geria and the wine making process there, as was featured in the José Andrés Lanzarote final episode.

[erica1]

Fried eggplant with the sticky, sweet sauce; 6.90 euro

Exterior; mix of low- and high-topped tables. A reservation would be a good idea:

The hojaldre pastry with spinach, cheese and palm honey!!! Wonderful! (7.50 euro)

Interior dining room:

Front door leading to small bar area:

I forgot to take pics of the pork meatballs, but the dinner proved to be a good surprise!

SEBE, soon, as well as our last Lanzarote dinner: Bodega de Santiago, and also the superb César Lanzarote.

Sorry, I spelled Frigiliana wrong (she of the glorious cane sugar "honey!) and could not edit, at beginning of this chapter.

[Maribel]

berenjenas con caña de miel, takes you right back to Córdoba!

Looking forward to SeBE and César Lanzarote!

[erica1]

SEBE

During nine day on the island, we dined at three restaurants listed in the Michelin guidebook. Of these, our favorite were PALACIO ICO and SEBE; our other favorite was dinner at CESAR LANZAROTE but I am not sure if this is listed in Michelin.

Although I’ve spent some small time in Valencia, I’ve not had a memorable paella. In Madrid I recently had an arroz meloso with clams that I considered disappointing.

Sebe’s rice with Iberian pork made up for these disappointments in a big way. Read a few online reviews of Sebe and much will be made of the fact that they tie a velvet rope between the street and the entrance to the premises. To that I say, “Big deal!!” We arrived in a taxi, with a reservation, and a staff member was outside to meet us and to shepherd us inside, calling us by our names with a heartfelt welcome. This is a small restaurant, with premises holding only about 15 tables at most; they do not want persons wandering inside and inquiring about free tables.

We loved this restaurant! I especially admired the old fish floats lined up in a niche in the rear, and scattered at a few tables. Understated but handsome decor that seems to exemplify the less is more ethos of Lanzarote.

Staff was present for every consult but was not overbearing.
With little appetites on the evening in question, we chose a hefty portion of moray eel, perfectly fried so that the exterior was crispy with no grease, and the interior revealed the firm white flesh that ought to make this eel more popular than it is outside the Canarias. This was called chicharron Morena (21.95 euro) but it was the textural paradox between the pearly white, large-flaked, juicy flesh and the pliant crispy exterior that is making me crave a plate as I write this. I will be seeking this out on more menus but it’s doubtful if I will find it outside the Iberian Islands!

The next dish was a rice, chosen from about 6 choices. Due to my partner dislike of shellfish, we chose the rice with presa Iberica and this was hardly a sacrifice; it was the best rice dish I’ve ever eaten. The rice here at SEBe embodies the saying that “the rice is the star’” here you will not find “paellas” leaned with a mix of chicken and shrimp and pork…NO!! The rice shines and the well-chosen ingredients (for us it was there juicy chunks of lauded presa Iberica) are the supporting players.

Compact dining room; very few non-Spanish speakers at this restaurant in Costa Teguise. (Advance booking required)

CHICHARONES DE MORAYA…Moray eel (21.95 euro)

Interior of Moray…firm white, flaky flesh with little oil left on paper placemat:

Locally appropriate decor elements; here, glass floats to indicate location of fish traps;

Served in a paellera, glorious dry rice with presa Iberica chunks…finally I have sampled a great rice dish!!

Second shot of rice, saocarrat was listed with shovel-like utensil and a wooden spoon; I could not get enough!!!

Non assuming exterior of a fine Costa Teguise restaurant!

Our total bill with water, one vermouth, and bread (charged at 2.95 per person) was a reasonable 98.65. Inadvertently, we neglected to select “EUR” on the charge card statement, so were charged in US dollars=$112.49. This did not Mae much difference but it’s good to keep in mind that even experienced travelers can slip up one in a while!!

SEBE: Essential rice restaurant in COSTA TEGUISE, LANZAROTE.

[GretchenS]

What a truly memorable and compelling description of a meal!

[digga]

If we make it to Lanzarote next year, meet us there!

[erica1]

Yes, for certain!

Although we spent nine nights on the island, I have the feeling that we left much unseen. I have yet to write up two other restaurants that we tried: EL RISCO in Famara, and CESAR LANZAROTE in Teguise, which was one of the “hits” of our stay…

From the small amount of online reading I have done, it appears that many visitors to the island concentrate on the coastal resort areas and miss the most alluring bits–the sights that make Lanzarote so special. Reading about Cesar Manrique makes me wonder if ever there was one person as influential as he in maintaining, and enhancing, one small piece of our planet. Sounds a bit much to say that but reading about his works, I am astounded.

EL RISCO, Caleta de Famara on the northern coast of Lanzarote, the first restaurant we visited on the island:

I had seen a clip of this restaurant in the Jose Andres tv program in the US and it appeared to be just the kind of no frills seafood place that I gravitate to.

Indeed, the location is film-worthy: A tidy blue and white dining room looking out on the windswept sands of Famara, a surfing mecca in a village where the streets are sand and the structures are white cubes splashed with the marine blue wood trim found in most of Lanzarote’s coastal towns. (Inland towns favor green trim).

We had booked ahead (essential) and were warmly received. Service throughout was lovely and attentive, with the servers and manager addressing me by my first name.

The laid-back village of Famara, and the dining room, which was full by 4pm on a Thursday in May:

View from our table of the beach at Famara, a surfing Mecca where swimmers need to be VERY mindful of the currents; the tiny, sparsely inhabited island of La Graciosa, connected to Lanzarote by a short, frequent ferry, looms in the far distance.

Entrance to EL RISCO:

I was intent on trying a signature shellfish of the island that I believe is known in English as “limpets” and in Spanish, “lapas.” However, not once did I spy these on any menu during our stay.

While scanning the carta, we were advised that there were two items (fuera de carta," these would be known as “specials” in the US, dishes usually recited orally but not listed on the printed menu, as they should vary by the availability at market on that morning.)

One of the items offered fuera de carta were gambas from La Santa, the small port known for its lonja, where much of the prized shellfish served in Lanzarote’s restaurants is unloaded each morning, to be snapped up by restaurant buyers. (You will often see “La Santa” applied to varieties of shrimp on the island, usually meant to indicate freshness and quality).

These were medium-sized shrimp fanned out atop a black cast iron pan in a pretty presentation over an ample bed of large-flaked salt. The shrimp were excellent and I loved that they were served with the heads intact, as is usual in Spain…
(22.85 euro)

The famed “wrinkled potatoes” (papas arugulas) of the Canarias, served here with two mojos (salsas): One red (slightly spicy,) and one green, fragrant with parsley and cilantro. (6.90 euro) This is probably one of THE signature dishes of the archipelago and later in our stay, I received a lesson in preparing red mojo from the chef of our hotel. A special variety of potato is used to make this dish; we stopped at a store in Soo, not far from El Risco to learn more about this, and about other local foods.

[erica1]

We shared a main dish, the local favorite sama de roqueta, a species of lubina (Pagrus Auriga) that derives its name from feeding near the offshore rocky lava reefs. This is a white-fleshed fish, served here with the (same) potatoes and a mixed salad of cabbage and lettuces. It was not priced by weight, as I was used to in mainland restaurants. (49.80 euro for a portion large enough for two hungry diners).

At my request, the waiter scooped out the dark meat cheeks and set them apart on our plates. That was the best part of the fish for me. My partner liked the fish well enough but I thought the flavor was bland, even after a healthy shower of olive oil and red mojo. (Cheeks at the top, left of the potatoes)

However, there were inedible scales in the fish; I don’t know enough about fish to know if this is usual, but they were unpleasant in the mouth. When I was peering at my portion to try to avoid the scales, I noticed a tiny white worm. It was dead but I inspected it very closely and I know it was a worm.
I do know that worms are sometimes found in swordfish, which I buy and cook fairly often at home, but I’ve never seen a worm in a restaurant fish. I was unsure about how to proceed and in the end, decided not to share this with my partner, nor with the waiter. Looking back, I am pretty sure I made a mistake. But I just do not know how common this is, or what the protocol is–does one just push the critter to the side, and continue with eating? Surely this is not the fault of the restaurant…I just did not know what to do, so I ate a bit more of my portion after carefully inspecting each bite, but honestly, the lunch lost some its allure for me and we, in fact, canceled a second reservation that we had for later in the week.

We passed on dessert and I made no mention of the uninvited creature. Lunch for two, with bread and water, totaled 91.50 euro.

If anyone knows about the presence of worms in fish, please let me know…undoubtely I should have alerted the waiter.

Close to EL RISCO is a lovely shop featuring local Canarian foods; I will write about LA TIENDA DE LOURDES, in Soo, next.