Spot of Midweek Tapas for Mel

CLICK HERE

I have to to say, I have never been really convinced on Tapas. My past experiences are that you either end up with a lot of patatas bravas as all your friends have had the king prawns that were over the other side of the table, or it's a bit samey, you know, meatballs, prawns, even potatoes with the same red tomato sauce on. But as my friend had suggested a mid week mete up in Manchester and La Vina had just emailed us to say they had a new menu on with some authentic new dishes I thought why the heck not.

The Deansgate restaurant is over two floors, half the tables down stairs are high bar stool type seats and a glass balcony shows off the 1st floor - in short it looks the part, modern Spanish.
Nice, handsome waiter offered us a few tables, I went for the the high ones. Menus looked good and it was nice to see some blackboard specials as well.

We picked 7 between us (par is 3 each apparently but as you know, I can eat), we went for some of the new dishes, like the Fabada Astuianat, which according to my photo of the menu was a 'rich Spanish pork & bean stew, the signature dish of the Asturias', (whoever they are), and the also new Uqueta, a 'Catalan-style fish stew of prawns, white fish, mussels, & clams in a rich tomato, saffron & almond sauce', also a battered fish dish and two of the specials - Mussels and some spinach croquettes alongside the obligatory potato and bread options.

Food came promptly, which is always good. They were all decent sized and looked great, so we tucked in. Personal favourites were probably the chicken Con Salsa which had was a creamy chicken dish lovely almonds toasted on top, and the spinach croquettes were really good. try them if you go. To be honest it was all good, even the fish in the Spanish tomato red sauce I mentioned earlier was very decent, although a lot of clam shell, and not much clam with it (I guess that's the problem with clams).

As I don't get out much (as you will know), I thought i'd go for a pudding as well, (why not its basically Christmas), so I went for the warm Chocolate orange sponge brownie, could have been slightly warmer but really good and rich.

With all the new places opening we do tend to forget about some of the more established 'always good' restaurants, and this one certainly in the 'very good' category. Go and try for yourself, well worth a visit.

---

Posted: Thursday 16th November 2017
ID: 3463 - 1951