London, London restaurants, Michelin restaurants

Benares Restaurant – Best Indian in Town

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My wife Ms B and I have just returned from a tapas sharing platter lunch at Benares, Atul Kochhar‘s Michelin-starred Indian restaurant on Berkeley Square. The 5-dish street food sharing platter cost a mere £30 for the two of us and we topped it up with two cocktails for another £10 in total. A mind-boggingly marvellously brilliant deal. You pay more at most pubs in this town to get two portions of rubbery, battered cod with sliced, oily, deep-fried potatoes and some luke-warm IPA.    Right from the moment we arrived at the ground-floor reception, the service staff were very friendly, polite, helpful, relaxed, unpretentious and knowledgeable, a true delight. The atmosphere is also very pleasant, with dimmed light, sound-absorbing décor, warm colours, a nicely decorated bar and a lounge area with a little pool where lovely gerberas were peacefully floating around. It was in the lounge area where we […]

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Food, Portugal

TapaBento Porto

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We went to TapaBento on our first evening in town and enjoyed the beautiful tapas, friendly staff and rustic but at the same time somewhat upmarket atmosphere. We shared razor clams/navalhas (one of my absolute favourites, both here and at other seafood restaurants), clams/’Ameijoa Algarve’ and Carpaccio with some Tortilha Batata and a few glasses of beer. The potato tortilla slices were just €5.50 each, the other tapas €15, which is avery fair price, considering the large portions of prime quality ingredients.    We were planning on coming back, but somehow got distracted by other lovely restaurants each time, so it’ll have to be when we are back in Porto later this year that we’ll try some of their other food.    TapaBento is the original restaurant of the owners, and focuses on tapas. A few years ago they opened a sister restaurant called TapaBento Trindade (Trindade after the Trindade […]

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Barcelona, Restaurants

The two best tapas places in Barcelona and other fun stuff to do in town

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Our two favourite tapas places during our weekend trip to Barcelona two weeks ago were Bar Celta Pulperia in the Gothic Quarter’s Carrer de la Mercè, where octopus is the meal of the day every day, and Quimet y Quimet, just off Carrer de Blai in Poble Sec. We were surprised that, being a Pulperia, Bar Celta only had three variations of octopus that day, two of which we ordered: the usual Pulpo a la Gallega, octopus Galician style, cut into thin slices with lots of paprika and oil on top, and baby octopus in broth with vast amounts of garlic and parsley. The price of €14 for the Pulpo a la Gallega was unexpectedly high, but the quality of the ingredients, the expertise of the cook who prepared it, and the sheer size of the meal completely justified the price tag. We also liked the fact that the bar […]

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