Bilbao Berria

I can’t believe Bibao Berria has been hiding away from me on Lower Regent Street! This Basque-Spanish restaurant offers a fantastic menu with traditional Pinxtos and Tapas served in the bar upstairs to the full menu served in the downstairs restaurant. They source their ingredients from local Spanish retailers and have one of the widest ranges of Spanish wine in London, which I was particularly excited about as I absolutely love Spanish wine. Inside Bilbao Berria, it has a really big area, the lighting is lovely (not so good for photography) but really lovely to dine in. Downstairs the wine selection of reds line the wall and you can also see inside the kitchen to see the chefs in action. The menu has a mixture of smaller starter dishes to slightly larger meat and salad dishes.

The wine list is indeed pretty extensive, that I actually wasn’t sure what to choose so we ended up choosing a bottle of Cava. I think Cava and tapas is such a perfect pairing, it just feels much lighter to drink. We had a bottle of the Signat Brut Nature which was absolutely lovely.

We then started off with some small plates to share. We had tomato bread as always, but this one was superb, it was so, so tasty that I just really want this right now. I’m not sure how you can go wrong with tomato bread but really some places do and this one was spot on! We also shared a plate of Jamón Ibérico croquettas, again very good and went lovely with the fried egg with cream of chorizo & straw potatoes. This was a take on the egg and chips I guess, Spanish style. The thin potato like chips and fried egg were just perfection and the chorizo added an extra flavour.  Of course for me Spanish eating is not complete without some ham, we had a plate of acorn fed Jamón Ibérico, just lovely.

We then moved on to two more meaty dishes. The grilled beef flank steak with chimichurry sauce and I think this was suckling pig I can’t quite remember but looked a lot like pork belly anyways and tasted like it too!. Both were very nice, I just wished there was more.

Lastly for dessert, I ordered the white chocolate coulant with dark chocolate and mango ice-cream. It didn’t quite come out the way I had expected and the mango ice cream was definitely more melon than mango. The texture of the coulant was soft and warm, I over heard the girls next to us who ordered the same dessert wanting more dark chocolate, which for me I am not a big fan of so was pretty happy with my choice. Danny had the mascarpone cheese mille feillue with strawberries in balsamic, this looked very creamy indeed!

I had a really lovely meal at Bibao Berria, the staff were attentive, I liked the atmosphere of the restaurant and the food was really delicious, I would definitely go back!

To take a look at the menu and book visit bilbaoberria.co.uk.