Amarena — Restaurant in Bilbao

At the beginning everything seemed in order. 22€ bottle of wine; very good. Then with food, the issues arise. I had salmon carpaccio and wife asparagus. My entre was semi-ok, but found a hard object (maybe scale) in the food. Aspagus was from tin, and looked very sad. Main course entrecote and stuffed chicken. Waiter did not ask for cooking of the steak and it came as raw… ok, send back, and make medium. Came back almost the same. Third time the steak was chopped to stripes, so even the untrained cook could now see that beef is medium and most of the fat had melted. On the downside my wife’s chicken was cooked bone-dry. French fries ok, but peppers are also from can. When looking at people leaving, no one had happy face. I would...

We were encouraged by the nice interior but I will stop at this point with a pleasant comment on the restaurant. We ordered crocquetes which didn’t have any spice - just poor quality cheese breaded. For main dish we ordered margaret (or something like this) duck which was served with potatoes - actually one potato sliced into 5 pieces. The duck was full of fat, hard to chew, very gummy. I ordered cod in basque style which wasn’t served with any extras except the sauce. The fish was very bad with a smell of silt. Additionally, when I was asked about water I said no. I thought when we get it, the water is served for free, but no. On the bill it was included anyway. Very poor...

We had the “menu”, which for non-Spaniards means an affordable pre-fixed price. Our menu was 19 euros/ person for a 2-course meal plus dessert and a full bottle of wine. We found this to be an excellent value and our meal was delicious. The service was good, although the waiter tried to rush us at first to sit down even though my wife was still trying to get her things settled. We had a very civilized, very pleasant lunch experience in a cobble-stoned part of town. We highly recommend Amarena.

PS - Photo is of the monkfish which I’ve never had before. It was tasty with a consistency almost...