We discovered Macher 60 while driving from our hotel in Playa Blanca to the city of Arrecife on the island of Lanzarote. Our first impression was how beautiful the building was, and that immediately made us book a table for dinner the next day.

Indeed, the architectural project of the owner, Antonio Hernandez, is quite a sight for sore eyes.

His dream project came to life in 2006 with the name of La Tegala, now changed to Macher 60.

The concept of Macher 60 is “Gastronomy and Art”. Canarian cuisine with style. Art pieces are displayed everywhere once you step inside and make your way through the bar to the main dining room -- even in the restrooms!

As for the gastronomy part, we opted for the degustation menu called “Ruta de Sabores Canarios” with wine pairing. It came with six dishes and six wines, which was a real bargain at 38 EUR the menu, adding only 10 EUR for the wine pairing. Good value for a good meal.

Each dish was well crafted, the products and ingredients were well sourced. There were two dishes that we really loved: the green peas soup with cream and violet flowers, and the duck breast with honey rum sauce and pretty mashed potatoes. The dessert, called the Sweet Little Point, was very refreshing, made with goat yoghurt, banana and cactus jam gofio crumble.

The excellent wines were all locals except for the red wine which came from the Ribera del Duero, domain Linaje Garsea.

The service was a one-woman show, extremely efficient, nice and, most of all, she spoke good English.

The restaurant is probably one the most beautiful venues we’ve been to in the past two years. The food is good and well cooked. However, if it wishes to become a true gastronomic reference and a gourmet destination on the island of Lanzarote, the chef needs to up his game in terms of inspiration, creativity and refinement.

Macher 60

Carrer 35572 Macher,

Las Palmas, Espagne

Tel : +34 928 52 45 24

www.macher60.com

Naia is the best restaurant that we tasted in Lanzarote. We discovered it just by walking around

Arrecife and along its small fishing port (a smaller version of Havana’s Malecon).

Littleboboonette spotted a Michelin plate on the facade, so by curiosity we took a closer look. Luckily it was lunch time and the restaurant that was about to open. The waitress welcomed us and we chose a table on the terrace, overlooking the ocean.

First, the waitress showed us the wine list which consisted of six white wines (all of them from Lanzarote) and seven red wines from Rioja and Ribera del Duero. After ordering our drinks she showed us the lunch menu for us to choose among five starters and six main dishes, plus two special dishes “du jour”. A short menu is always a good sign as that means that the chef is cooking fresh products and ingredients which indeed was the case at Naia.

The chef, Mikel Otaegui, trained with the best chefs of San Sebastian, in the Basque country, and it shows as everything we ate at Naia was delicious. From the incredible tortilla to the sweet and salty salmon Teriyaki with Thai rice, or the sardines with avocado and cilantro, and his apple tart, the chef hit the bull’s eye with brio.

The Lanzarote white wine we took was from the Florida bodega which was excellent for the occasion.

The service by our waitress was all around very good and efficient.

Chef Mikel Otaegui’s Naia is a real discovery and a must eat if you travel to Lanzarote.

Naia

Av. César Manrique, 33,

35500 Arrecife, Las Palmas, Spain

Tel :+34 928 80 57 97

www.restaurantenaialanzarote.com

It had been six years since Littleboboon set foot in Barcelona last. On our way to Lanzarote island we decided to make a stopover in this beautiful city to meet with old friends.

To celebrate the occasion, we invited them to Xerta, a one-Michelin-star restaurant located in a five-star hotel called Ohla Barcelona.

Xerta restaurant is the domain of the chef Fran Lopez and his brother Joaquim. Fran Lopez is a disciple of Alain Ducasse and one of the youngest chefs in the world to obtain the coveted Michelin star for his cooking.

The chef offers a cuisine from the Delta de l’Ebre to Barcelona. For lunch, the customers have three choices: the Homage Menu with eleven dishes (135 euros), the Delta Menu with five dishes (55 Euros) and the Executive Menu with two starters, one dish of meat or fish and the choice of two desserts and two glasses of wines for 42 Euros, which is a great deal – and what we opted for.

The starters were from the different corners of the Delta de l’Ebre, each bouchée was a delicatessen. The main dishes were Baby Duck with mustard and fines herbs and Sea Bream from Sant Carles de la Rapita, both perfectly cooked and very tasteful. Finally for dessert: a Mango and Passion fruit with nitrogen and yoghurt ice cream, and Milk Chocolate Crab, sandy beach crumble, green rocks and basil cockles. A perfect ending to a great lunch.

The wine served with the meal was a very good white wine called L’Indià from Catedral Del Vi.

The service was smooth and easy going -- and in English.

Fran Lopez definitely deserves his star in the Michelin guide, for his skills and for bringing regional cooking to Barcelona.

Xerta Restaurante

Carrer de Còrsega, 289,

08008 Barcelona, Spain

Tel :  +34 937 37 90 80

.www.xertarestaurant.com

For our Easter holidays in Lanzarote we chose, for the first time an H10 hotel: the H10 Rubicon Palace, a five-star resort, for its design, family amenities and location in Playa Blanca in the south of the island.

The hotel is grandiose (that pool!), beautiful, well designed and built. At first sight, you can tell that it is meant to cater mass tourism. There are six restaurants, six bars, five outdoor pools and a huge indoor spa and pool (the Despacio Thalasso center), a game arcade, a cinema theatre, a daisy kids’ club and multisport courts, but... (ah yes, there is often a but when you stay at a five-star resort in Europe, especially in Spain) even if the outside is beautiful, what's inside does not always match.

In our opinion, a five-star luxury resort must be excellent at every level, especially the service. Unfortunately, in this area, we are rarely fully satisfied in Europe. The H10 Rubicon Palace is poorly managed. The rooms are not as spick-and-span as you would expect of this category of resorts, the in-room safe is very old and too small, our kid noticed a lot of empty plastic glasses, bowls, forks and knives lying by the side of the beautiful main pool. We alerted the Office Manager about it, but it took them three days to clean it up. Another example: when we asked the hotel staff at the lobby to help us contact a Covid-test center so we could do our PCR-test for our flight back to France, they simply gave us a list of medical centers, we had to do it ourselves. When we arrived at the hotel the first day with our rental car and two big and heavy pieces of luggage, nobody was there to welcome us, no bell boy to take care of our luggage. We had to do it ourselves. Breakfast buffet was OK, dinner buffet not so much. Not acceptable.

Of course there is Covid and the place is probably less staffed than usual, we know that, but there are also less guests to take care of plus the price we paid is not much lower than usual. Management blamed Covid and only Covid. Same song we heard last year in Portugal and Spain. The root of the problem is much simpler: it is a Management problem and it goes way back in some European countries, way before Covid, which is just a convenient excuse now.

We think that European hotels and resorts top management should go on seminar in Asia to see how luxurious hotel brands like Shangri-La, Mandarin Oriental or Six Senses manage their hotels and their staff over there. That would be a wake-up call. Well, hopefully.

H10 Rubicon Palace

Urbanización Montaña Roja

35570, Las Palmas, Spain

Tel : +34 928 51 85 00

www.h10hotels.com/en/lanzarote-hotels

Bernd H. Knöller is a legend in Valencia and the chef and owner of the one Michelin star restaurant, Riff. Riff was the last restaurant we tasted during our gastronomic tour of Valencia this spring.

We had a fish menu for our lunch on Sunday March 22nd, which was composed of six dishes in addition to the usual starters.

Our meal started very good, especially with the tuna and the white Bloody Marie shot, served with incredible breads but... it ended disappointing with a pretty bad dessert, a mascarpone cream and prunes. It is always a shame to end a good meal on a bad note.

The wine list was great, with one of the best ciders in the world, the AnanasRenette 2016 number 39 from Schneider house.

The service in English was so tedious but they did their best.

In the end, unfortunately, Riff was the gastronomic experience we appreciated the least of all three in Valencia. We are not saying that it was not good but we definitely found better and if Bernd H. Knöller wants to keep his star, he’d better up his cooking game a notch (or two).

Restaurante Riff

Carrer del Comte d'Altea, 18, 46005 València

Valencia, Espagne