Arenas Lounge

Lanzarote Restaurant Review – Arenas Lounge, Puerto del Carmen

I love great service and this story starts with a terrific example. We’d booked Arenas Lounge with two friends, but one of them went into hospital unexpectedly the evening before, so we called the restaurant straight away, respecting the fact that with limited numbers, they’d want to offer the table to someone else and put us on a two. They told us no problem, but here’s the good part – once we’d sat down, the waitress asked “How is your friend in hospital?”

We’d heard from several foodie friends that Arenas Lounge offers super food in a good setting, which was why we’d booked it in the first place. It’s in a very residential area, Los Mojones, so you either need to drive or taxi to it, and when you walk through the doors, you’re immediately in a tranquil, tropical garden, complete with a swimming pool. The setting is just stunning and the chef, Germán Blanco, is very well known on the island.

We were completely spoiled for choice on the menu, which included a lot of options you won’t normally find in Lanzarote restaurants, and dishes with fascinating sounding spins. We decided to make it easy on ourselves and go for the tasting menu – we love it as a way to try a new place and to give us a feel for what the chef is like. I particularly like that in this case, there is no list of what’s coming. The waitress asked us if we had any allergies or foods we don’t eat, and explained that we would get an appetiser, two starters, two mains and a dessert.

What we were served was sumptuous, beautifully presented, interesting and full of flavour. We started off with some fresh baked bread, truffle butter, Conil olive oil and two types of salt and then our appetiser arrived, which consisted of a Gazpacho style soup in a glass, and with an olive emulsion in a spoon. The soup was lovely, but the olive emulsion was simply incredible – a little flavour bomb of the most intense olive.

That was followed by a scallop ceviche as our starter. A large portion of tiny scallops, with a cilantro lime sauce that worked beautifully with them.

Our second starter was wild mushrooms in a rich truffle gravy, with mashed potato and asparagus. This was our favourite dish of all –  a wonderful flavour and perfectly balanced.

It was time for the mains – the first was a fish course, hake from La Graciosa, perfectly cooked, our guess is steamed, and served on a bed of al dente vegetables. The fish was perfectly cooked and nice and firm.

The second main was a beef dish served with mashed potatoes, gravy and spinach. My guess is that it was braising steak that had been cooked in a sous vide and then seared. Again, it was cooked to perfection, but it wasn’t as tender as I would have liked and we thought it lacked the intense flavour hit of the the other dishes. It did have a small amount of a sweet chutney with it, which really lifted it, and we could have done with more of that, and perhaps some different sides from the fish course.

After a suitable pause, our dessert arrived and it was amazing. It was a passionfruit brioche, which had a caramel topping, like a brûlée, and served with home made coconut ice cream.

We enjoyed a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc with the meal, complimentary honey rums, and coffee. The tasting menu is €40 per person, and our total bill was €106.

We were really impressed by Arenas Lounge – it’s classy and cool, the service is superb and the food is exceptional. It’s right up there with the very best that Lanzarote offers in terms of gastronomy.

You can find Arenas Lounge at Calle Janubio 9, Los Mojones, Puerto del Carmen call +34 928 59 62 41. They’re open every day except Tuesday from 1300 until 2200. They have an online reservation system.

For Information, we don’t give reviews in return for free food or advertising and we never tell the restaurant we’re planning to review them. We simply rock up, eat our meal, pay the bill, and then write our review. 

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