Barcelona Tapas Bar & Restaurant

On the last night of the (sadly missed) hot weather this week, I had a sudden craving when I got home from work and stared feebly at the cooker. It came to me as a vague memory of being in a hot land, once, before I moved to England, and eating something lovely outside, watching the sunset. Ah! Tapas, I thought. Little morsels of deliciousness. Easy on the waistline. Fun to share. Easy on the wallet. All washed down with a nice cold cerveza, I thought. Que bueno.

A quick flick through my Time Out Cheap Eats guide found our nearest tapas bar, Barcelona. It said they did a good Sunday buffet, but I figured we wouldn't have much, and we could just check it out for the next time we felt like a Sunday all-you-can-eat tapas buffet. (!) So off we went on the bus.

The first disappointing thing I noticed was that the bar had some great big red umbrellas, which would have been a nice place to sit and watch the sun go down, but that they were awfully close to the main road (the upper end of Lordship Lane is not that attractive). Then we got inside, and although the decor was cute and the tables well-spaced, the place was empty, bar two sullen-looking couples who looked like they wished they'd turned around and gone home.

I kind of wished we had, too. But a strange politeness comes over me in restaurants. I watched as the podgy elderly Spanish gentleman waiter came to greet us. He looked so excited! So happy! He had customers! So we sat, and looked through the vast (seemingly authentic) menu. There was lots of offal on offer. Mmm.

In the end, we lazily decided to order the set tapas menu at £10.99 per person. It included albondigas, chorizo, patatas bravas, chipirones, champignones and bread. We had some olives on the side and a 100ml bottle of Mahou. Nothing was outstanding. The chorizo was oily and tough, the squids also tough and nearly inedible.

We paid £35 for this delightful evening (the restaurant empied very soon after we arrived). I really, really wanted to like it there. I wanted to like the podgy waiter, who smiled sweetly at us as we stumbled over ordering in Spanish. I even tried to imagine his history asked him where he was from, tried to imagine how a man from Galicia ended up in this sorry place in Dulwich. I tried, really I did.

Next time, I'm going to Brindisa.