This Tapas restaurant is a lively, cosy place tucked on the corner of a cobbled side alley close to the Pleasance.
I have never been to Spain and have not tried tapas before, so I'm far from an expert, though I believe that tapas traditionally is a small bar snack to accompany drinks in a pub.
That being said the tapas here is expanded to make it large enough for a main meal (when two or three of the tapas are combined).
We had patatas bravas (cubed chips essentially), chorizo in red wine sauce, battered mushrooms and cheese, grilled peppers, butter beans and black pudding, black pudding and relish,(all of these had Spanish names obviously but I can't remember them!) battered cubes of fish, iberico ham, and prawns in garlic and olive oil and to finish churros and coffee.
Firstly the iberico ham was the standout for me by a mile, (it's cut from a big leg that stands triumphantly near the entrance.) it was sweet, savoury and full of rich creamy fat.
The prawns and the fish were cooked to perfection, however the majority of the other dishes were underseasoned. The peppers should have been encrusted liberally with salt apparently but didn't seem to have any seasoning at all so tasted bland.
The patatas bravas weren't crispy like good chips but limp and soggy.
Don't want to go on and moan a lot but the main issue was simply lack of flavour.
Which is a shame because service was friendly and they put up with our rather boistrous birthday celebrations with good humour and brought out some ice cream with sparklers and played 'Happy Birthday' but I feel the ruthless sword of truth must be wielded!
The churros were again a bit lacking on sugar and pale and anaemic looking and the chocolate sauce could have been thicker.
It wasn't a terrible meal by any stretch of the imagination, all perfectly edible but needed more flavour.
One final issue was that the meal had to be conducted in two 'shifts' as it were because the table was too small to contain all the tapas we'd ordered. read more