Las Lanzas, Playa de las Americas
I’m not sure why Las Lanzas isn’t busier than it is. Perhaps it’s because it’s set back from the road a little. Perhaps it’s because it’s always given the impression of being a “locals place”, rather than somewhere for tourists – and it is only in the last couple of visits that I’ve that I’ve heard customer voices that weren’t Spanish.
There’s a short menu of, generally speaking, simple to prepare dishes – mainly lumps of fish or meat cooked on the grill or in the frying pan. There was a really excellent basket of bread, which we scoffed with the starters. A dozen or so king prawns had been given a brief seeing to on the grill and were as good as you might expect them to be – just tasting of themselves. Croquettes are homemade and come in ham or prawn versions. I ordered the prawn one – about eight crispy balls, enclosing an absolutely spot-on flavoured béchamel.
Less than spot-on was the first attempt to cook a steak. Or, to be precise, not to cook a steak. It’s extremely rare that we have to send food back but this was more raw that rare. The second attempt was accurate – juicy flavoursome meat with some fried peppers and onions counting towards your five a day. And there’s a separate plate of chips that tasted and looked as though spuds had been peeled, cut and fried in the kitchen, rather than a packet of frozen opened and thrown in the fryer.
Sole was “off”, so there a second choice of cod, simply cooked on the grill. There were other fishes on the menu but we didn’t recognise their names in English or Spanish. The chef certainly knows how to cook fish. This was perfect – the fish just breaking away in big flakes. There’s the same fried veg to accompany and Canarian potatoes.
We know from past visits that desserts here are not good. So, we just had coffee and it was excellent. But we still needed something sweet, so walked down the road to La Venezia for pancakes – can thoroughly recommend the Nutella and banana one as a real rib sticker. And, with that, we waddled off back to the apartment having been very well fed.
