KABUKI at ABAMA

On our second to last evening in Tenerife, we had dinner at Kabuki. We had been to the original Kabuki in Madrid in the summer of 2007 and still haven't forgotten the wonderful meal we had then that we were so looking forward to trying the one at Abama.

The restaurant is located within the Citadel (main building of the hotel) and has modern interiors with black mosaic tiles and touches of red. Staff uniforms are in muted greys and on the table are a simple grey and white rectangular plate with a silver chopstick rest. We had a quick look at the menu just to see what interesting dishes they had - there was a chef's tasting menu, sushi, sashimi, tataki and fish tartars, main courses and even a kid's bento box menu.

We started with an amuse-bouche (palate teaser) of steamed sea snail with a sesame oil dressing - an interesting flavor that one either loves or hates (I loved it but J and A wouldn't have any of it). Our first courses were served: salmon sashimi (slices of raw salmon), negi-toro roll (fatty tuna, spring onions and rice wrapped in seaweed) and soft-shell crab roll (fried soft-shell crab with rice). The sashimi was excellent - not-too-thin slices raw salmon eaten just with a tiny bit of soy sauce and wasabi (Japanese green mustard) and the soft-shell crab was hot and crispy while the rice was cold - a very good flavor combination but it was the negi-toro roll that stole the show - half a dozen delicious mouthfuls of buttery fatty tuna and finely chopped spring onions. (Toro is expensive but every bite is worth the price.)

Our son happily coloured his paper place mat until the main courses arrived - from the kid's menu, a bento box of tori karaage (deep-fried chicken pieces) served with rice and spinach - just the right size, it's the yummier Japanese version of chicken nuggets. A had the unadon (grilled eel served over rice), I had the prawn tempura (deep-fried prawns) and we both shared a salad of cold cooked spinach with a soy sauce and sesame oil dressing. After our delicious dinner, A brought our son back to the room to get ready for bed.

We ended our dinner shared one of the desserts especially created for Kabuki by famed Catalan chocolatier and patissier Oriol Balaguer - three quenelles of dark chocolate, over white chocolate jelly and caramel sauce topped by crunchy dark chocolate crumbs - a delicious end to a fantastic meal.