Canary Islands – we eat Canarian or Spanish?

OK, the Canary Islands belong to Spain, nevertheless the distance, history and geographic location made us expect to experience the kind of delicacies that are typical only of this region.

The influence of Spanish culture can be seen here at every turn, including in gastronomy. Is the Canary Islands a place where we will eat more than tapas, Spanish tortilla of eggs and potatoes or paella?

Our first impression was poor: we cross the threshold of the hotel and from everywhere we are attacked by restaurants with Italian, Spanish, German and British cuisine. Next to a German and Spanish supermarket, where you can get products available on the mainland. Since we had kitchens in the apartment the proximity of such stores was quite useful for us. We didn't want to spend too much time cooking, but a few times we bought semi-finished products or local frozen food to reheat – it's always good to try new things 🙂 We especially liked the desserts, or rather the way they were served (e.g. Ice cream in coconut, pineapple) or banana bread/cake 🙂

About the regional delicacies of the Canary Islands a few words…

We wanted to try as many local foods and delicacies as possible, but Spanish flavors and dishes are prevalent in the kitchen. Nearby we found a local canteen, where we could eat tortilla or calamari, served with fries and salad, for really not much money.

In this place I also discovered the best way to have coffee – barraquito, That is, coffee with condensed milk, foamed milk, liqueur and lemon/lime peel. Fable!

Layered drink, sweet, with a hint of lemon became my number one not only on this trip 😉 I later tried to recreate this drink at home but I still need more practice 😉 As a souvenir from the islands, you can bring back just the milk for this coffee as well as the very popular caffeine-free coffee.

Canarian cuisine draws from many other cuisines, but here we can always count on fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, seafood.

The popular bananas can also be found in salads with vegetables and white cheeses (we tried one on our way from El Teide).

On the islands we absolutely wanted to try traditional wrinkle potatos (pictured above) , which we already wrote about in one of the posts. Worth a try, necessarily with different sauces.

What else we ate mostly in Tenerife? We followed the tips of guidebooks and TripAdvisor so we managed to get to some really interesting places, where we tried m.in.

Delicious, refreshing Sangria:

Ferrerro Canario – sounds like a dessert, and in fact it is an appetizer from the black pudding, almonds and honey:

Fenka, ie rabbit, which is also popular in Malta:

Personally, I was disappointed with the local cuisine. I expected more exotic cuisine, a greater proportion of fresh vegetables, fruits and seafood. As you can see, this is another place where you'd sooner find Italian pizza, German kebab or Spanish paella than something typically local. Nevertheless, one will not die of hunger 😉