The La Laja restaurant in Costa Adeje Gran Hotel offers fine dining beautifully prepared and presented and at the sort of prices that mean you don’t have to wait for a special occasion to enjoy it.
Perfect for discerning palates.
When it comes to restaurant settings, there’s something unerringly romantic about a waterside location.
Positioned alongside the fabulous rooftop swimming pools of the Costa Adeje Gran Hotel is the cool, stylish La Laja restaurant.
Taking a table in the window, we watched the sun turn the façades of the elegant hotel gold and cast palm silhouettes into the still surface of the pools before it dyed the heavens scarlet and disappeared into the night.
When you enter the a la carte restaurant of a five star hotel in Costa Adeje, you expect that you’re going to be paying a premium, but the menu prices were no higher than the menus of many sea front restaurants.
Taking the advice of restaurant manager Rodriguez, we opted to start with the warm goat’s cheese salad with tomato and pine nut vinaigrette and the foie terrine with caramelized onions and apple purée.
For main course we chose fresh fish baked on its back served with a Bilbaine sauce and duck Magret with onion purée, sweet potato crisps and port coulis.
Freshly baked rolls and a selection of flavoured butters arrived, followed by complimentary hors-d’oeuvres of deliciously smokey salmon in teppanyaki sauce served on a bed of polenta.
As the sun bade goodnight, the first course arrived. Two perfect slices of foie terrine lay on a slate board alongside a fresh salad topped with a flower of caramelized onion, surrounded by ribbons of apple purée and finished with a generous sprinkling of rock salt. The terrine was a perfect texture and melted in the mouth with a fusion of flavours; the onions were sweet and tangy and the purée complemented them both beautifully. The only flaw was the rock salt decoration which had to be carefully worked around so as not to pickle everything.
The warm goat’s cheese lay on a fresh salad, topped with a piquant vinaigrette of pine nuts and tomato and drizzled with honey. The lightly grilled French goat’s cheese was rich, tangy and creamy with a slight saltiness which combined with the honey to send the taste-buds into euphoria.
For main course, the fish was a fresh dorada (bream) which was cut lengthways, grilled and served with a mild onion purée and tasty sauce of tomato and mushrooms. Cooked to perfection, the flesh was moist and flaky with good flavour and texture.
But the culinary masterpiece of the evening was Chef Pablo Aznar’s duck Magret which was succulent, tender and melted in the mouth. Served with the onion purée and light tangy crisps of sweet potato, this was a gastronomic triumph.
To finish, we chose home made apple pie served with vanilla cream and the chocolate surprise which we were warned would take 10 minutes to prepare.
The time was well spent watching the moonlight dance on the water and the guests of the hotel dance at the Pool Chill Out party while we finished a soft, full bodied Lomo red.
The apple pie was delicious but the chocolate surprise was out of this world. A lightly baked outer sponge concealed a sensuous centre of hot, dark chocolate sauce ““ this was a sweet that belonged in the grown-ups section of the menu.
Where, when and how:
Restaurant La Laja, Costa Adeje Gran Hotel, Avenida de Bruselas, 16, Costa Adeje; the restaurant has its own entrance on Avenida de Bruselas just along from the hotel. Open evenings only 19.00 – 22.30, closed Weds & Thurs; reservations ““ (0034) 922 71 94 21
Prices:
Starters average €8; main courses average €9.50; sweets average €4.20
A good selection of Canarian and Spanish wines range from €9 to €40
Open to:
Residents and non-residents. Guests in suites at the hotel dine in La Laja and guests on half or full board can upgrade for a modest supplement.
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