Las Canarias brings Canary Island cuisine to Calgary

There aren't many places in Calgary to get Canary Island-style cuisine.

Florin Serban, who came to Calgary from Romania to work in the oil and gas industry, first fell in love with Spanish food when he visited Spain with his son.

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He was so enamoured with the country's cuisine, he wondered why there wasn't more of it in Calgary.

On that visit to Spain, Serbanmet ClaudioTaranu, who hailed from theCanary Islands a Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa. Serban convinced Taranu to come to Alberta to partner in a new restaurant venture.

Taranu enlisted chef Viktor Domahidy, who owned a restaurant on the Canary Islands for six years. In2015, they both brought their families to Calgary to open Las CanariasSpanish Tapas Bar in a new development in Royal Oak.

Their upscale eatery didn't fare well alongside so many other restaurants, including a burger joint, so in February they relocated to 17th Avenue S.W., hoping to tap into the foot traffic and be more accessible to people in all quadrants of the city.

"We were always busy on Friday and Saturday nights," Serban says."But during the weekdays, we were slow, and the pubs were packed."

While their new spot isn't quite a pub, they've made the place more casual and more affordable to accommodate Calgarians' seemingly shrinking dining-out budgets. Florin himself was a victim of dropping oil prices when he was laid off late in 2015.

Their menu is unique, with many ingredients imported from Spain, like jamn ibrico de bellota (acorn-fed, free-range pork, cured for 48 months), 24-month serranoham, Iberian chorizo and Spanish cheeses like manchego.

They bring in Valencia rice to make six different types of paella with seafood and fish (chef Domahidy makes his own halibut stock), chicken, beef, chorizo, rabbit, calamari and langoustine (also known as scampi) in various combinations. The paella is allmade in the style of the Canary Islands crispy on the bottom and around the edge.

The paella takes 40 minutes, so you can enjoy some Spanish wines and a parade of tapas to help work up an appetite: tasty small bites like papas bravas, Spanish tortilla, chorizo pate, mussels and clams with chilies and wine, and coconut shrimp, offered in a range of small sizes.

"There are two items on the menu that are very much grandma-style the croquettes and the tortilla," Domahidy says. Spanish-style tortilla is made with thinly sliced potatoes baked in beaten egg, similar to a frittata.

Claudio's wife Ana Agrafojo is from Galicia, on the north coast of SpainnearPortugal.

"Basically the best seafood in Europe is from the Galician waters," Domahidy says.

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"She learned many dishes from her mother and grandmother, so she always makes the tortilla and the croquettes.She's unbelievable."

Dessert offerings include a classiccremacatalana, a Spanish baked custard with a crackling sugar top, similar to cremebrle.

"Most of our dishes are comfort food," says Domahidy.

"I'm a classically trained chef, I don't do anything modernist. There is sous vide rabbit and duck breast on the menu, but we want to represent classic, homestyle kitchen comfort food."

"We want people to come in and gather together, clean their plates with a big piece of bread, and just enjoy themselves. That's all we want."

Las Canarias Spanish Paella & Tapas Bar is located at1129 17 Ave. S.W.