Serenity is Puerto del Carmen’s hot new restaurant, right across the road from Lani’s Suites, and with the same owner as the suites. The whole building is newly constructed and it’s looking stunning. There’s a large clothes shop and ice cream parlour on the ground floor, the restaurant is on the middle floor, and there’s a fabulous chill out area, with Jacuzzis, on the roof terrace.
We’d booked for 7.30PM, but we arrived at 7 so we could enjoy a cocktail on the roof. Puerto del Carmen served up a gorgeous sunset for us, the service was fast and slick, and the music at exactly the right volume. The bar there serves a good range of cocktails, sushi and snacks and you can hire a Jacuzzi for an hour, with various packages ranging from a bottle of cava to Louis Roederer Vintage Champagne, served with tapas or sushi.
After our drinks, we headed down to the restaurant, where the greeter offered us a complimentary glass of Rosé or Brut Cava and showed us to a table by the windows overlooking the Avenida. The decor is incredible, with very ornate chandeliers, artwork all over the walls and something to look at and admire everywhere. The centre section of the space is cleverly raised up, so those away from the windows can still enjoy the ocean views from the huge windows. The main motif is “peacocks,” and there are murals and images of them everywhere, peacock feathers adorn the tables, and the colours are picked out on the wall and furniture. Proper linen, with silver napkin rings, and heavy, high quality cutlery is used. The attention to detail is on a different level. Some examples – the lights in the chandeliers change as the sun goes down, increasing their warmth, the music is exactly right, enabling easy conversation, the air conditioning is silent, but keeps the temperature exactly right, reacting when the sun stops heating the interior through all the glass.
The staff too, match this feeling of effortless quality, despite the fact that Serenity had only been open a few days before we arrived. There was always someone walking past, checking to see if we needed anything, topping our wine up, and asking if we were enjoying the food.
Click an image to open the gallery and then read on below….
The menu has some interesting and different dishes on it. There are some unusual salads, a choice of hot and cold starters, rice, pasta, fish, meat and vegetarian dishes, as well as gourmet burgers and pizzas. A few of the dishes are smoked in house, and you get a lovely whiff of smoked wood when a table nearby orders one.
For our starters, we chose to share a lightly smoked lobster salad, and 100% Iberico ham from acorn fed pigs. The salad was stunning – dense, heavy with mayonnaise, with succulent pieces of lobster throughout. The ham was some the best I’ve ever had, and was served with pieces of toast and a tomato chutney. There was an excellent extra virgin olive oil on the table which went perfectly with it. My only complaint is that the toast was described as wood fired baked bread, but it looked and tasted more like it had come out of a packet.
For our mains, Julie chose Lamb Baklava and I went for the Ribeye Steak, in retrospect, the wrong choice, but I’ll tell you more in a moment. The Lamb Baklava was excellent, and a really innovative dish. It was a sort of baklava pastry pastie, densely packed with slow cooked lamb, covered with pistachios and walnuts, and drenched in honey with drops of a mint mojo sauce, all served in the richest gravy. A real triumph!
My steak was good – very well cooked, if a little under seasoned, and served with some Boulanger potatoes and fresh broccoli, asparagus and red pepper. But at the end of the day, you can get good steak in many places. I was seduced by the fact that it was a rib eye, and it’s not a cut you get here often, so I chose it before thinking through the other choices on the menu. Next time, I will be more adventurous. But if you’re a steak lover, don’t hesitate, I just think I should have gone for something different.
The wine list is good, with all the decent local whites on offer and good range of reds from around the world. We had a bottle of Argentinian Malbec, served exactly as it should be, at 18 degrees.
Looking at the dessert menu, it was good, again, to see something completely different to the usual offerings. Julie went for Baked Pineapple Carpaccio served with pistachio snow and salted caramel ice cream and I chose Caramelised Brioche with Chantilly cream. The former consisted of wafer thin, almost see through slices of pineapple and a stunning, obviously home made ice cream, and the latter was a cube of brioche, with a crunchy caramel outside it – think creme brûlée topping – and a not too sweet cream. Desserts to die for!
Our total bill was €70 a head including tip, but we chose more expensive dishes. You could have a starter and a main and keep the cost below €35 each. But Serenity is the sort of restaurant where you want to linger, enjoy the good service and the ambience, and treat it as a special occasion.
Serenity is at Avenida de Las Playas 41, in Puerto del Carmen. You can call them on +34 828 702 197 to book a table.
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.
See all our restaurant reviews.
