East Didsbury, Spanish - Restaurant Guide

This “authentically Spanish” little corner bar on a backstreet in Chorlton “ranks among the best tapas places around Manchester – and there are plenty of them!”. A fixture since 2010, “it surpasses the hype, thankfully,” and “puts a smile on your face every time” with its “excellent traditional food and wine”.

“Excellent Paella”, “fantastic wine” and “helpful staff” help win praise for this “lovely” tapas bar. It’s the original of a group over twenty years old, with siblings in the Northern Quarter and more-distant Knutsford: “each branch is reliably buzzing and lively”.

2022 Review: This celebration of Basque cuisine in a Lancashire former mill town is a sibling to Levanter a few doors away, and the two “brilliant” venues effectively operate as one, offering diners the option of Hispanic bar-hopping. The wood-fired Pereruela oven allows for larger dishes to be served, such as sirloin on the bone from 10-year-old Galician oxen, to go with the smaller pintxos and tapas.

Simon Shaw’s “vibrant” flagship tapas bar is “always buzzing” thanks to “very welcoming staff” and spot-on food – 20 years after opening in Ripponden, Yorkshire, where it set a new standard for Hispanic cuisine in the North, and 10 years since transferring to central Manchester. Shaw has diversified in recent times, with a trio of Black Cat Club shuffleboard bars in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.

2022 Review: Multi-Michelin-starred Barcelona chef Paco Pérez was the marquee signing for Pep Guardiola, Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano, the trio behind Manchester City’s success, when they launched their upscale Catalan restaurant three years ago. The cool interiors – industrial chic for communal eating on the ground floor, minimalist glamour upstairs – are designed to throw a focus on the food, served as ‘tastets’ (small plates with more complexity than tapas). The verdict? definitely Premier League (in both quality and prices), if not yet a Champions League winner.

2025 Review: “Busy and buzzy” as the Northern Quarter in which it sits (particularly if you sit at the “really cool” bar), this decade-old corner spot is, for one reporter, “as good a tapas bar as I can imagine”, offering premium Spanish draft beer to wash it all down. There are now a trio of links in the chain: a second Manchester branch in Deansgate, and one in Knutsford, 14 miles south-west of town (the Altrincham spin-off sadly having shuttered in late 2023).