What I've Really Been Surprised to Discover About Lanzarote's Gastronomy

When I first stepped foot on Lanzarote as a tourist, I thought I was coming for the beaches and the volcanic landscape. What I didn't expect was for the food to grab me so viscerally. I recently went back to investigate the local gastronomy, and honestly, it changed my perspective on what traveling really means.

It all started in Teguise. Someone recommended El Recoveco de NaRa to me, and I decided to go without too many expectations. You know, it's easy to romanticize local food as something exotic when you're a tourist. But what I discovered there was different: it wasn't a simulation of tradition, but living tradition itself, told through dishes that have been on Canarian tables for centuries.

Wrinkled potatoes: much more than it seems

The first time I ate wrinkled potatoes the right way, it wasn't in a tourist restaurant but in a Canarian woman's home. They were simple, unpretentious: boiled in water with plenty of salt until dehydration created those characteristic wrinkles. Accompanied by red and green mojo.

What no one ever explained to me is why this is so important. It's not a dish just because. It's a dish because for centuries, people here needed something that was cheap, that lasted, that satisfied. The small potatoes, the salt water from the sea, the salt that preserved them. Then came the mojos: a way of transforming basic ingredients into something flavorful.

At El Recoveco de NaRa, I tried their wrinkled potatoes and felt exactly that: simplicity turned into excellence. There are no tricks. The red mojo with its garlic, cumin, paprika, and vinegar; the green one with fresh cilantro. What's interesting is that you realize every element counts. Not because someone decided it in a cookbook, but because entire generations discovered that this works.

Sancocho: the dish that speaks of an era

This is where I begin to understand why people in Lanzarote are so obsessive about gastronomy. Sancocho is not just food. It's history on a plate.

Centuries ago, when fish was salted to last weeks without refrigeration, people from the interior of the island didn't have access to fresh fish. Solution to the problem: sancocho. Salted fish that needed to be desalted, potatoes, sweet potato, and an accompaniment we now call pella de gofio—gofio kneaded with the same broth as the fish.

What fascinated me most is that this dish is eaten traditionally on Good Friday. For centuries, the Church forbade eating meat that day, so the Canarians invented a perfect solution: fish. And not just any fish, but one that made sense with what they had available. It's the kind of creativity that emerges when need knocks on your door.

When I tried it at El Recoveco de NaRa, I understood what it means to eat it properly. The cherne (a robust fish that withstands salt), the desalting done with patience, the potatoes that maintain their texture, the sweet potato providing contrast... It's like reading a historical novel with your mouth.

Gofio: that food that defines Canarians

This is where my initial romanticism clashed with the reality of ancestral knowledge.

Gofio has existed since before the Spanish arrived on the islands. The Guanche people—the first inhabitants of the Canaries—toasted cereals and ground them into flour. That's gofio. Then came African influence, American cereals (millo, corn), and what remained was a preparation technique that has endured millennia.

For me, what was striking wasn't discovering what gofio is, but understanding that it's a food that has literally kept Lanzarote's people alive. Mothers gave it to children dissolved in milk. Farmers ate it with raw egg. In times of scarcity, gofio escaldado—kneaded with hot broth—was the difference between starving or not.

Today, when you see the pella de gofio that accompanies sancocho or gofio escaldado in a soup, it's not nostalgia. It's an act of resistance. Of memory. Of saying: this keeps us alive for millennia, and we're not going to forget it.

Limpets: what the Atlantic really offers

Here in Lanzarote, near the sea, I tried real limpets for the first time. Not the frozen versions I've seen in other places.

Limpets are shellfish that cling to rocks with incredible force. To eat them, you have to pry them loose, cook them on the griddle with olive oil, garlic, white wine. The flavor is intense—almost too much—concentrated, pure ocean. Nothing diluted. Nothing compliant.

When I ate them at El Recoveco de NaRa, I could feel the difference between a limpet that traveled frozen and one that was fresh just hours before. It's not a minor detail. It's the difference between a generic experience and an authentic one.

Grilled octopus: a technique that has its logic

One thing I discovered is that Canarian cuisine doesn't arise from magic, but from constant observation. Grilled octopus is a good example.

Local cooks discovered something: if you submerge an octopus twice in boiling water, the skin will cling perfectly to the flesh. A third immersion cooks it all through. Then, briefly on the griddle, it comes out crispy on the outside and tender inside.

Why does it work? Because someone took the time to observe, to fail, to try again. That doesn't come from a book. It comes from patience and repetition. It's the kind of knowledge that my generation tends to underestimate because everything comes in YouTube tutorials now.

Goat cheese: simplicity made extraordinary

On Lanzarote, the goat is practically a symbol of identity. We're talking about animals that adapt to an arid climate better than almost anything else. And from that comes milk, and from milk, cheese.

It's not cheese with its own DO (Designation of Origin), but honestly that hardly matters. I've eaten fresh goat cheese here with a little olive oil, and it's one of those foods that reminds you why certain things don't need complication. Simply excellence.

What surprised me is how it integrates into everything. It's not an accompaniment at El Recoveco de NaRa, but another character in the story the chef is telling.

Desserts: sweetness that comes from the heart

I tried the bienmesabe (its name says it all: "it tastes good to me"). Egg, almonds, honey, sugar, lemon. Nothing sophisticated. And yet, it's completely different from any dessert I've ever tried. It has a creamy texture, a flavor that doesn't try to be modern, just authentic.

Then there's frangollo: a sweet pudding with millo flour (not toasted, that's important), eggs, milk, sugar. Cooked slowly until the batter is compact. If you do it quickly, it doesn't have the same thing. Again, patience.

Eating these desserts is understanding that local gastronomy isn't a matter of modernist technique, but of respecting times, processes, ingredients. What people today call "slow food" here is simply called "how we eat."

Wine: the perfect closer

I discovered that Lanzarote produces wine from the La Geria region, where vines grow in volcanic ash soil. The result is wine with minerality, with character. When I tried a local dry white with the wrinkled potatoes and red mojo, I understood why some people have dedicated their lives to this.

It's not that it's a collectible wine. It's that it's the wine for that food. As simple as that, as perfect as that.

Teguise: where the pulse still beats

Lanzarote has beaches, it has landscape, it has a sky that at night looks so bright it seems printed. But Teguise—the historic center, the town where Spanish conquistadors settled in the sixteenth century—is where you can still feel the layers of history.

It's where people eat as they have eaten for centuries, because the geography, climate, and available resources haven't changed that much. At El Recoveco de NaRa, while you taste these dishes, you're literally traveling through time.

When a Canarian grandmother tells you a recipe, she's not giving you instructions. She's passing you a fragment of her soul. And here, in places like this, that still happens. The recipe isn't just how to make something, but why it matters, who made it before, what it meant to them.

What I learned that isn't anywhere else

What surprised me most to discover is that this gastronomy is an act of defense. Not tradition for tradition's sake (that can be boring). But "this keeps us alive, connects us, defines us, and we're not going to let it disappear."

The Guanche were here more than two thousand years ago. Then came the North Africans. Then the Spanish. Then American ingredients arrived. And from all that, the people of Lanzarote created something that is completely their own. That's not a recipe. That's an identity.

When you taste an authentic dish from Lanzarote in the right place—at El Recoveco de NaRa, in a restaurant where what's being cooked is respected—you're not being a tourist. You're being part of a conversation that has lasted centuries.

If you come to Lanzarote, come for real

Many travelers pass through the Canary Islands and eat the same thing they'd eat anywhere else. It's easy to fall into the trap. There are resorts, there's international food, there's everything you'd expect to find in a tourist destination.

But if you really want to understand what Lanzarote is, you have to sit down and eat what the people here eat. You have to ask the uncomfortable questions: Where does this come from? Why is it prepared this way? What does it mean to you?

That's the journey that's worth it. And that's what I found in places like El Recoveco de NaRa—not just food, but stories. Not just flavors, but meaning.