What comes after cock?

It might sound like a strange title to you, but its taken from one of Ann’s comments on my last blog entry about us eating English food rather than authentic Spanish food. Rather than follow the comment up with a reply comment, this entire blog entry is dedicated to answering your question Anne. Your right of course, regarding our choice of English at the start of our holiday, but we do always try to put a Spanish twist on it, like Friday when we had fish and chips at the Manhattan in Los Cristianos, I had aioli with it. The day before, I had steak and kidney pie with chips and peas but I had Dijon mustard with it. I know that’s French but I’m not sure that I have heard of a Spanish mustard? Just because we are abroad, doesn’t mean that we can’t be adventurous with our cuisine.

More seriously, we do like to sample local cuisine whilst away but its not always possible in a massive tourist area; and even if some places do serve the odd local dish its usually rubbish and not authentic at all because their chef can only cook tourist crap. After all, the first time that I came to Tenerife in 1978 this entire area was natural except for a few local villages. Even in Las Americas there were only two hotels at that time and no airport. This entire area has been manufactured for the tourist industry so its hardly surprising that the majority of food supplied is tourist food. The only authentic restaurants around here must have moved into the area since the invasion. In 1978 I stayed in Puerto De La Cruz, a well established area lived in by locals for centuries so you could easily get good local food at local prices. You struggled to get tourist food for a change, you get fed up of rabbit and milk veal after a while. Times have changed, I’m so pleased that I had the chance to see places before the change. For example, I drove around the north west coast of the island during my first trip and hardly saw another vehicle. Sometimes, you needed one as the roads were small and windy with frequent rock falls so you needed to move rocks just to get by. When we drove around on Thursday we took an old cliff road down to Masca and you couldn’t move for traffic; it was a nightmare. Buses and vans as well as cars by the thousand; never again. Every time you met a bus coming the other way you would have to stop and reverse into the wall to let him by. In fact, that is exactly what I did at one hairpin.

Anyway, at least I got a few photo’s of the area before the fog came down, which I have put at the end. We drove as far as Icod De Los Vinos to see the Drago tree but it was impossible to find in the fog and they charged to get in anyway so I took a picture of a similar one in a little courtyard; use your imagination. We did actually see the top of it at one point but couldn’t get anywhere near it. I saw it in 1978, a German film crew were filming Heidi along side it.

Before we came away, I took a few minutes to search the internet for the best restaurants around the Golf Del Sur area and copied the following list onto my i-phone;-

Rendezvous

Electra

Tapas n Chill

Dabda

Heweli

Sakura Tieppanyaki

Big All’s

I got these from the top 12 leaving out the chains like Aberdeen Angus etc. all except for Big All’s they are not English and we sought them all out. They are not all local either but a good cross section all the same.

As Claire said, we ate at Dabda for our wedding anniversary on Monday and had a lovely meal. A little expensive but worth every penny for me. We were served by the lovely Sinead and her husband Walter is the Chef from Italy. They have worked all over the world and have been there for 6 years. Having finished our meal we were chatting to Sinead about them and our trip and she gave us a book called, “mi gusto” a lifestyle and gourmet publication which they happen to be in. I asked them where they go to eat when they go out and she said that their favorite is in San Miguel about 10km up the road. We both thought that she was going to say “Tasca” that we stumbled across last time and is really good old fashioned local cuisine but at a price. She surprised us by saying “El Portillo” on the outskirts.

Anyway, after our disappointing trip around the west coast that we intended staying over, we drove all the way back to try El Portillo. We were both a little disappointed as it has no outside space which is nice when you are eating in a hot country. It wasn’t cheap but it was good cooking, we opted for Chataubriand for two. The reason that it was good cooking is that I had to cook it myself; they brought out the fillet seared and he carved it in front of us and I had to cook it to our taste over a charcoal flame grill. It came with a mushroom sauce, Canadian potatoes with the red and green sauce, some anemic chips and some little indescribable vegetable crochets. It was all a bit too “poncy” for us.

The other one that we have tried, twice is El Brasso, almost walking distance from our hotel; the one with too much meat and no menu but if you are hungry thats the place to go. You can stay there all day eating if you like between 1pm and 11.30pm.

Heweli is an Indian restaurant but you can’t seem to get in the mood for hot food in this country. It cant be because its hot as we eat curry all the time when we go to India and it really seems to work and its far hotter than it is here.

The Sakura Tieppanyaki is Japanese but they also do Chinese and Thai.

Big All’s sound too English or American and it doesn’t open until 5pm so not for us.

I cant remember what Electra was but I hope we get chance to try it while we are here.

The top restaurant on the list was Rendezvous and it took some finding. Strange really, as its right next to the Albatross apartments where we have stayed twice before, but I guess that we weren't looking for it before.

You have to go right inside the Winter Gardens where they have a huge bowls club; but again, that doesn’t open until the evening.

The only one that we haven’t stumbled across yet is Tapas n Chill which does sound like it might be local cuisine; maybe when we return in May.

Saturday we headed off to Los Crystianos to find our little Spanish 3 course cafe called La Taverne but when we got there it was shut down so we walked around a little bit and drove back to Sand Blas in Golf Del Sur where we were to try Electra but it didn’t open until 6pm either. We ended up at Heweli for an Indian; they do a 3 course for €10.95. The service was a bit slow off the mark but I think we may have been there a little before they opened. It was amazing, my starter should have cost €7.95 and must have been for a party of four. I tried my first ever Indian Phal and now I don’t know what to do with myself. Claire had the Chicken tandoori which was for at least two followed by her favorite chicken tikka masala. Excellent value for money and very tasty but in the evening its hard to get a seat (especially after a phal).

What will we have for Sunday lunch? Will it be English, Japanese or will Claire get a choice?

Anyway, getting back to the title, “What’s after Cock?” Well I guess that its a matter of personal taste, hey Anne? That’s made you all think about it for a moment. I suppose the favorite is Cock O Van, but it could be Cock O leaky or even that aphrodisiac classic, “Cock O Rhino”; or is that made from its horn?

Anyway, I think that the real answer is that Stony Stratford classic, “Cock and Bull”!

Note! Having a nightmare with this system so photo´s are out of sync with text, sorry.