Sorry to burst everyone's enthusiastic bubble, but I don't get it. After the rave reviews, I was tremendously excited to taste my way through the diverse menu. Unfortunately, I found myself having to convince myself that something wasn't dry or overly salted more oft than not. By the end of the dinner, I was positive my £20 could have been better spent elsewhere. Where do I begin?
Olive oil was delicious but they charge for each little dish they give you. Bread was, well, not so delicious (tasted a bit like supermarket bread with a bit of a crust) and they charged per person (although this is expected in London). Sangria tasted, as one friend put it, like sugar water. Perhaps they watered it down because we ordered it during happy hour (half off) but it didn't even taste like half the alcohol.
With the exception of the jamon iberico, the pimientos padron, tacos de berenjenas, and the bunuelos de bacalao, which were fantastic, I thought the rest of the tapas were, at best, okay. This included the albondigas, the pincho diablo, croquetas de jamon iberico, and the list goes on (about 10 more). While none of these were bad, none of them stood out. At this point, the restaurant was batting .307. Good for baseball, not really for food.
But probably the most disappointing dish of the night was the paella. The vegetarian paella one poor girl ordered was straight up salty, which we sent back to the kitchen after everyone had tasted it and confirmed it wasn't the case of a few sensitive tastebuds. The kitchen agreed that it was over-salted and she ordered two tapas to replace her paella, which could not be made in time. However, even the Catalana was too salty (we didn't complain because it wasn't *as* bad and this one was for 6 people). Everyone just kept drinking water and sangria to dilute the saltiness.
I suppose no one aspect of my dinner was particularly terrible in any sense, but the additive property of many small problems made the meal disappointing. read more