Food to make Canaries Sing?
Pro Flavour intensity at the top of the scale.
Con With so much experimentation, there are misses. Happily, only 1/16 went the wrong way.
Pay
1⭐ Michelin, awarded 2019.
€€€€+
Per Person Full-length tasting menu is €80 for, on this occasion, 16 dishes. Add wine & beer and it's about €20 more pp. Gratis; bonus dish, goodbye sweeties.
Find
Website https://gofiorestaurant.com/
ℹ️ Dietary Info Checked on ordering. There's no menu, as such.
Access Step free to eating area.
In Short
Hopes. Discoveries.
Reality. Some of the most intense flavours we can remember.
First Impressions. White walls and tabletops, with a blur of black outfits at the far end of the room.
USP? The chef's vision.
The offer in three words. Creative Canarian classics.
Service! Attentive and detailed explanations, entirely in Spanish.
Friend friendly? They asked about dietary questions. Don't know if they do 16 V-plates.
Rating for dating. Full of them.
Tip? 5%
Change one thing? A salty-sweet pre-dessert was an invention too far for us.
Revisitability. Dishes we'd like other people to try, certainly.
Compare & Contrast
Creative, cosmopolitan tasting menu at Dstage.
In Pictures
The interior has fewer tables than many of the photos and is now very,very white. Google Images
What's the story?
The key takeaway: you're not going to forget a visit to Gofio. An avalanche of dishes will come at you, sometimes several at a time. By the time the last dessert is done, you'll be glad of the menu card they print off as a souvenir. You'd need total recall to remember everything you've just eaten.
And, being honest, if there are nits to pick, that's one. So many dishes, so many ingredients. It tends towards the overwhelming. Mind you, it's also a sign of the chef's boundless energy and enthusiasm. This guy loves feeding people. Everything's on the plates, and it's really rewarding to be part of it. We're going to respect the vision and, like the Gofio website, not go into great detail about dishes. Surprises are everything and you should go as we did - expecting the unexpected. But, spoiler alert. If you must, come back after the star ratings for comments on some dishes.
Taken as a body of work, there are several things to know about the savoury offer. Firstly, this is, from the opening moments, a Canarian menu. Classic ingredients, ideas and flavours are to the fore. Seafood and fish dominate, cooked and eaten in traditional ways, which means you'll be glad of the compressed hand towels which expand like alien embryos when water's added.
A lot of that Canarian impact comes from smart employment of multiple mojos, often with unexpected key ingredients. They're used cannily to enhance and complete many dishes. As a bonus, they also often beautify the plating. A two bird/one stone technique we've seen modern Indian cuisine exploit with multiple chutneys and pickles, too. Appropriately then, one mojo wasn't a million miles from the sub-continent thanks to its signature ingredient. Meat dishes make up about a quarter of the menu and some would have benefitted from less protein cooking time. There's also a higher cosmic background black truffle level than is really needed. Who needs truffle? Give us more Canary!
Desserts don't quite hit the heights some of the savoury dishes reach. Polished and professional, they're too restrained. An injection of fun and silliness would make for the grand finish the experience merits. Solution? When your USP means you can showcase the versatility of gofio, there's an opportunity going in the sweet department. Go a bit wild with it, don't keep it on the sidelines.
The house beer is Heineken, hopefully a placeholder for something distinctively Canarian. It feels tonally out of place, even more so when the entire wine list is sourced from the islands. There's no bread at any point, by the way. It'd cost you a dish or two if there were.
Service was pretty much on point, although getting on for 2.5 hours for a sitting. That's a long time, and I think something's slightly amiss somewhere, as the delivery rhythm struggled at points. This might be down to a kitchen trying to manage a vast number of dishes. The mass of chefs and servers working like demons in a tiny servery at the far end of the dining room suggests space at a premium. That said, the choreography is worthy of Dancing with the Stars, especially when three servers appear within seconds to deliver multiple dishes from different angles. They've clearly practised. It was nice to be offered the chance to try a bonus dish the chef was presumably trying out, too.
All in all, Gofio's obviously worth a trip. It's a more relaxed experience than some we've tried (no-one's going insist on pouring your wine for you), although maybe it's a work in progress in some departments.
The shorter menu - at €50 - may be the place to start, to mitigate the sensory overload that 17 dishes creates. You'll go away with some unique memories. That's what it's about, isn't it?
Food ★★★★ Decor ★★★★ Service ★★★★
Three from Gofio
Tomatoes aliñados. Here's an amusingly plated, rather beautifully designed, eye-opening tomato salad with the easily best lemon and thyme granita I've ever had. Also the first lemon and thyme granita I've ever had, but it'd be up there anyway. Alioli, fresh herbs and a basil oil that'll have your tastebuds doing star jumps make for an astounding and utterly recommendable dish. Amazing stuff.
Potas en Salsa. This is more hardcore. A meaty seafood tail in a rich fishy broth, with, somehow, a near chocolatey finish to it that works. The heads are served separately, and, yes, you are welcome, even expected, to extract the remaining goodness from them the old fashioned way. We are, frankly, treading carefully in linguistic terms with how one goes about that. Blushes might not be spared otherwise. Tasty stuff though.
Bocadillo de Vendimia Corvina. As pretty as a picture, finely chopped fish with spring onion on tomato bread is a delicious, memorable mouthful and a bit. What's the tomatoeyest thing you can think of? Whatever it is that bread beats it with a hockey stick dipped in sacla red pesto. There are plenty more mini dishes like this one to discover. All distinct, all beautifully presented, all excellent.
Pro Flavour intensity at the top of the scale.
Con With so much experimentation, there are misses. Happily, only 1/16 went the wrong way.
Pay
1⭐ Michelin, awarded 2019.
€€€€+
Per Person Full-length tasting menu is €80 for, on this occasion, 16 dishes. Add wine & beer and it's about €20 more pp. Gratis; bonus dish, goodbye sweeties.
Find
Website https://gofiorestaurant.com/
ℹ️ Dietary Info Checked on ordering. There's no menu, as such.
Access Step free to eating area.
In Short
Hopes. Discoveries.
Reality. Some of the most intense flavours we can remember.
First Impressions. White walls and tabletops, with a blur of black outfits at the far end of the room.
USP? The chef's vision.
The offer in three words. Creative Canarian classics.
Service! Attentive and detailed explanations, entirely in Spanish.
Friend friendly? They asked about dietary questions. Don't know if they do 16 V-plates.
Rating for dating. Full of them.
Tip? 5%
Change one thing? A salty-sweet pre-dessert was an invention too far for us.
Revisitability. Dishes we'd like other people to try, certainly.
Compare & Contrast
Creative, cosmopolitan tasting menu at Dstage.
In Pictures
The interior has fewer tables than many of the photos and is now very,very white. Google Images
What's the story?
The key takeaway: you're not going to forget a visit to Gofio. An avalanche of dishes will come at you, sometimes several at a time. By the time the last dessert is done, you'll be glad of the menu card they print off as a souvenir. You'd need total recall to remember everything you've just eaten.
And, being honest, if there are nits to pick, that's one. So many dishes, so many ingredients. It tends towards the overwhelming. Mind you, it's also a sign of the chef's boundless energy and enthusiasm. This guy loves feeding people. Everything's on the plates, and it's really rewarding to be part of it. We're going to respect the vision and, like the Gofio website, not go into great detail about dishes. Surprises are everything and you should go as we did - expecting the unexpected. But, spoiler alert. If you must, come back after the star ratings for comments on some dishes.
Taken as a body of work, there are several things to know about the savoury offer. Firstly, this is, from the opening moments, a Canarian menu. Classic ingredients, ideas and flavours are to the fore. Seafood and fish dominate, cooked and eaten in traditional ways, which means you'll be glad of the compressed hand towels which expand like alien embryos when water's added.
A lot of that Canarian impact comes from smart employment of multiple mojos, often with unexpected key ingredients. They're used cannily to enhance and complete many dishes. As a bonus, they also often beautify the plating. A two bird/one stone technique we've seen modern Indian cuisine exploit with multiple chutneys and pickles, too. Appropriately then, one mojo wasn't a million miles from the sub-continent thanks to its signature ingredient. Meat dishes make up about a quarter of the menu and some would have benefitted from less protein cooking time. There's also a higher cosmic background black truffle level than is really needed. Who needs truffle? Give us more Canary!
Desserts don't quite hit the heights some of the savoury dishes reach. Polished and professional, they're too restrained. An injection of fun and silliness would make for the grand finish the experience merits. Solution? When your USP means you can showcase the versatility of gofio, there's an opportunity going in the sweet department. Go a bit wild with it, don't keep it on the sidelines.
The house beer is Heineken, hopefully a placeholder for something distinctively Canarian. It feels tonally out of place, even more so when the entire wine list is sourced from the islands. There's no bread at any point, by the way. It'd cost you a dish or two if there were.
Service was pretty much on point, although getting on for 2.5 hours for a sitting. That's a long time, and I think something's slightly amiss somewhere, as the delivery rhythm struggled at points. This might be down to a kitchen trying to manage a vast number of dishes. The mass of chefs and servers working like demons in a tiny servery at the far end of the dining room suggests space at a premium. That said, the choreography is worthy of Dancing with the Stars, especially when three servers appear within seconds to deliver multiple dishes from different angles. They've clearly practised. It was nice to be offered the chance to try a bonus dish the chef was presumably trying out, too.
All in all, Gofio's obviously worth a trip. It's a more relaxed experience than some we've tried (no-one's going insist on pouring your wine for you), although maybe it's a work in progress in some departments.
The shorter menu - at €50 - may be the place to start, to mitigate the sensory overload that 17 dishes creates. You'll go away with some unique memories. That's what it's about, isn't it?
Food ★★★★ Decor ★★★★ Service ★★★★
Three from Gofio
Tomatoes aliñados. Here's an amusingly plated, rather beautifully designed, eye-opening tomato salad with the easily best lemon and thyme granita I've ever had. Also the first lemon and thyme granita I've ever had, but it'd be up there anyway. Alioli, fresh herbs and a basil oil that'll have your tastebuds doing star jumps make for an astounding and utterly recommendable dish. Amazing stuff.
Potas en Salsa. This is more hardcore. A meaty seafood tail in a rich fishy broth, with, somehow, a near chocolatey finish to it that works. The heads are served separately, and, yes, you are welcome, even expected, to extract the remaining goodness from them the old fashioned way. We are, frankly, treading carefully in linguistic terms with how one goes about that. Blushes might not be spared otherwise. Tasty stuff though.
Bocadillo de Vendimia Corvina. As pretty as a picture, finely chopped fish with spring onion on tomato bread is a delicious, memorable mouthful and a bit. What's the tomatoeyest thing you can think of? Whatever it is that bread beats it with a hockey stick dipped in sacla red pesto. There are plenty more mini dishes like this one to discover. All distinct, all beautifully presented, all excellent.
