With a menu like this, it’s no wonder this Surrey restaurant has been open for over three decades
Alfie Lau
Sun
Maurice Aguilar, at his La Masia restaurant with his daughter Monica, inspects the rack of lamb. Photograph by : Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
For more than 31 years, Maurice and Mercedes Aguilar have been bringing their brand of Spanish cooking to Surrey
It’s hard to miss La Masia Restaurant and Tapas Bar on Fraser Highway as it meets 64th Avenue. Set on a hill, you can’t help but marvel at the fabulous view of Mount Baker to the southeast.
The couple took over the restaurant — a former steak and seafood house — and named it after the Catalan word for estate, ranch or country house.
Enter the bottom floor and you’re in a tapas bar with more than 40 choices, but our party of three went upstairs for dinner, where the stately dining rooms wouldn’t be out of place in the hills outside of Maurice’s birthplace just north of Barcelona.
It was a quiet weekday night, so all the diners were in the front room overlooking the Fraser Valley.
We started with a hot appetizer — the baked oysters with spinach and cheese ($9.75 for three) — and a cold appetizer, the ceviche ($9).
The mix of hot and cold was both tantalizing and refreshing, as the hot oysters, followed by the shrimp and large halibut chunks, were quite representative of the tapas dining experience.
For our mains, we couldn’t resist a couple of the daily specials to go with our other choice of the filet mignon ($27) served with five tiger prawns ($10).
I went with the chicken breast served with two lamb chops and lentil soup ($27), while our female guest went with the baked filet of sole served with a side salad ($25).
“We don’t change our menu much except we have a special every night,” said Mercedes in a phone interview. “This is a menu that has worked for some time and our customers like it.”
Maurice, who now supervises all the cooking in the kitchen, is a renowned chef himself, having learned his craft in Barcelona before coming to work in Canada, where he helped open a seafood restaurant in a downtown Vancouver hotel and another restaurant adjacent to the Cambie Street Bridge.
But with the Aguilars, now fixtures in the Fraser Valley, it’s easy to see why they’ve enthralled diners for more than three decades.
The highlights were the sole –smooth as silk was our unanimous verdict — and the lamb chops, which were the definition of melting in your mouth.
The filet mignon was tender, the chicken breast juicier than usually can be expected from chicken and the prawns were a nice complement to the meal.
We couldn’t help but notice that we covered every major meat group, which was apropos because the accompanying vegetables didn’t quite meet the same standard. The deep-fried potatoes seemed out of place with such a fine selection of meats, while the carrots were a bit too soft for my liking.
Our dessert ($7) was a delectable caramel pudding nicely enhanced by peaches and vanilla ice cream.
The meal was a solid and respectable night out until the final act.
La Masia’s computerized Interac machine went on the fritz and that led to us not receiving our bill for 30 minutes. Add in another 30 minutes waiting for the server to try to get it fixed and it was a frustrating hour.
What we found distressing was the lack of effort at trying to find an alternative. After all, credit cards existed before Interac machines.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you. You should never have to wait that long,” Mercedes said during a phone interview several days after the meal. “We always work very hard to try to please the customer and when that doesn’t happen, we have to work with our staff to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Neither Mercedes, nor Maurice was working the night of our meal and if they were, the matter would have been handled differently. “We’ve been in this business for 31 years,” she said. “We believe in what we do. We try to serve the best food and we try to do our best to please the customer . . . You always have to please the customer.”
– LA MASIA RESTAURANT AND TAPAS BAR
19209 Fraser Highway, Surrey
604-574-7633
Hours: 5:30 to 10 p.m. for dinner
Monday to Thursday (until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday)
Tapas bar open for lunch and for late-night dining
Website: www.lamasiarestaurant.com