Wineshark Mystery Restaurant - Lola Maria

This Spanish restaurant is on Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, offering a combination of traditional Spanish cuisine that the chef grew up with, reimagine them with modern creativity and flair, featuring high quality ingredients.

Coming through the red brick entrance, the eatery is quite large, with high ceiling and warm lighting. Arriving in the early evening hours of this Wednesday, it is already packed with many people enjoying drinks and tapas.

We also order a few tapas to start. The Potato Tortilla ($75) is a signature Spanish dish, made from eggs and potatoes. While there are other options with toppings like chorizo or Iberico ham, I believe the original version can best showcase the flavours.

Next is Air Baguette with Brown Anchovy and Lemon Butter ($25 each). On the crunchy baguette there are tails of brown anchovy placed, providing savoury notes on top of the lemon butter for acidity and richness. Delicious.

The third tapas is 30g Iberico Paleta Ham ($138). The ham are from the famous producer la Prudencia, using black pigs that are acorn-fed. With rich fragrance and an amazing savoury delicacy, it is also not too salty.

Then comes Black Seafood Rice Del Senyoret ($245). The traditional Valencian paella has squid, mussels, and shrimp pieces, with the rice cooked in squid ink to give the black colour and unique taste. With a bit of aioli to season, it is very delicious.

Another dish we have is Galician Octopus ($175). Served over grilled potatoes, the octopus are cut into thin slices, sprinkled with plenty of paprika, with mild and smoky flavours. The octopus are quite tender and not rubber in texture.

The Butter Lettuce Salad ($75) is supposed to come earlier but only arrive after we have finished almost everything. Apart from the lettuce, there are some goat cheese, dried tomatoes, sunflower seeds and tomato jam mixed.

An extra dish we have after the initial order is Spanish Red King Prawn Carpaccio ($168). The prawn meat is hammered to paper-thin, of nice sweetness, scattered with some pine nuts, spring onion, and dill oil.

For dessert my wife has Fresh Strawberries, Strawberry Sorbet, Whipped Mascarpone, Lime ($75). The refreshing sorbet with the fresh strawberries, combining with the sweet mascarpone, give a good balance on sweetness and acidity.  

I take Lemon Sorbet with Cava ($55) instead. Another refreshing one with alcohol, the Spanish sparkling wine is poured on the lemon sorbet, giving a nice fizz while reducing the sweetness level at the same time.

Service is decent, with the staff lacking a bit of attention in missing the salad ordered and not until I chased them for it. The bill on the night is $1,244. Considering the overall experience and food quality, I rate this eatery a Good 70 points, worth trying.