Holiday in Arrieta – Reviewed

THE GOOD

El Amanacer

We ate at El Amanecer twice in our week in Arrieta and it is easy to see why this simple restaurant is wildly popular. The service is friendly, the food is hearty, prices are modest, and atmosphere is convivial.

Service is efficient, to the point of intimidating, which is understandable when the staff need to turn tables in the busy summer months. On a quiet Sunday in December the efficiency was a little over the top. That said, my OTT ordering was quickly put in check by the waiter who rightly insisted we downsize and order less than half of what I asked for. The kind of service that instantly warms me to a restaurant.

Bread, mojos, gambas al ajillo, gambas a la plancha were all excellent. A fish of the day, presented whole and grilled, was cooked accurately but severely let down by an abundance of scales.

Scales are good in a music lesson, as Left back for Liverpool in the 90s, but never in a fish dish.

The jug of house wine at 7 Euro a litre was cold and sinkable in the way that wine on holiday always is. The coffee was strong and cheap.

Scaling aside El Amanacer is a great experience, and well worth a visit if you are in the area, or happen to be stuck in one of the dreary Lanzarote resorts and want some kind of “authentic” escape.

THE BAD

Los Pescaditos

We visited Los Pescaditos on a whim after a few beers that had built up a resistance to cooking that centred on the dread of washing up.

I left Los Pescaditos with a bad taste in my mouth, somewhere between mud and regret, that would return on me periodically throughout the holiday.

I should have trusted my instincts when, asking for a table on the terrace, we were refused as it was too busy. Despite their being plenty of tables laying empty. We ordered prawns and sardines and were eventually thankful that they arrived with some potatoes – edible at least.

Grilled sardines aren’t hard to execute, but it does require the presence sardines that were caught this century. I’m not sure where Los Pescaditos gets its fish, but i’d be surprised if it was the sea. I doubt the mouse Jerry would have had the malice to impart these sad fishies on the bad cat Tom.

To describe the prawns as wooly would be an insult to a sheep who is, at the end of the day, just trying to stay warm. Wrapping a few cotton buds in duct tape would have produced a meal of superior taste that would have been just as easy to peel.

A salad garnish was, at best, innovative, I doubt the thick cut raw onion salad will catch on in London any time soon.

Don’t go there. Do the washing up instead. Even if you don’t have a sink, or a water supply, or a cloth and the food is stuck to everything in the most horrendous way. Just do the washing up instead.