Tapas Brindisa

Press Reviews (7)

• Zoe Williams (28th September 2009)
  6.5/10
  
  The critic regards the “fabulous tapas giant”, Brindisa, as an “institution” that “introduced us to the style potential of the spicy chorizo”. However, she finds the menu at the Soho branch too “crowd-pleasing”, suggesting that the British “palate can take more of a challenge”.
• Jay Rayner (10th November 2008)
  
  “[T]he prices have dropped in real terms [but] it still ain't cheap” – the value issue takes up a lot of the space in the review of this new Soho offshoot of the popular Borough tapas bar. Ingredients are treated “with the utmost care and sensitivity”, though, and served up in “a smart space”.
• Giles Coren (27th October 2008)
  Meat/fish 6, Cooking 6, Prawns 0, Score 4
  
  “More restauranty, albeit in a very bijou way” than the original Borough tapas bar (which Giles “loved”), the Times’ man seems to have enjoyed the sherry more than the food here, but still “ate pretty well”. Like Charmaine Mok in Wednesday’s Time Out, he compares the croquetas unfavourably to nearby Barrafina’s, and he also scores “two dud” dishes (“quail in escabeche ... I could barely be bothered to fork over... and some prawns [suggestive of]... the scary shellfish farms of Asia”). “But then it all came right again”, thanks to a goat’s cheese and honey dish and “good” coffee. Spanish food “is for little people”, apparently, hence why the tables were “bouncing like suburban Ouija boards as our native 6ft-plussers tried [to cram in]”. Similarly “weeny Spanish men are very happy with an olive each” but “Englishmen are not so easily sated”. Still, being a “cute bonsai” himself, Giles doesn’t mind.
• Charmaine Mok (22nd October 2008)
  4/6 stars
  
  The “civilised” style of this new Soho Spaniard with its “muted – almost solemn – diners” seems to the critic at odds with “tapas bar-hopping in Spain”. It is also, she notes, “far more formal” than the Borough Market original and she tips the “buzzing bar at the back” over the “impersonal and clinical” dining room. Much of the food is “daisy-fresh” and the sherries slip down well, but an “obsecenely oversalted” cod carpaccio isn’t nice, the tortilla is “too dry, too cold”, and ham croquetas are no match for nearby Barrfina’s. Perhaps surprisingly, given the fair amount of criticism in the review, it concludes that “with such a high calibre of cooking”, the difficulty of getting a reservation is “to be expected”.
• Terry Durack (13th October 2008)
  15/20
  
  The critic nicely summarises his review of a new Spanish joint in Soho. “This is Tapas Brindisa [the popular Borough tapas bar] for grown-ups, where you can reserve a table, sit down and relax, match interesting food with interesting wines, hear yourself talk, and see what a good chef can do with the some of the best produce from Spain. It's a lot like my weekend lunches: simple enough, but with all the right ingredients.”
• Kate Spicer (6th October 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  “Brindisa’s reputation is high”, notes the critic. “It started life as a supplier of Spanish ingredients, then opened its lauded, chaotic and authentic tapas bar in Borough Market, where its fame for excellence took root. This is its first foray into the restaurant world, and it has chosen to do it in Soho, an area already brimming with very good tapas bars.” Her experience is a little more up-and-down than she expected.
• Marina O’Loughlin (2nd October 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  Oh dear, people don’t seem to have heard that there’s a recession on. The critic phones Andaman, Giaconda Dining Room, Murano and – even – Vanilla Black, and finds not a dinner table to be had. Hence she finds herself checking out the new Soho outpost of Borough’s famous Tapas Brindisa “rather earlier than I would have liked”. “Within a couple of weeks of opening”, though, “it's already running like clockwork”. “The place itself is spartanly pretty” too.