Bar 61, Streatham

This place is absolutely awful. Firstly it's not Spanish. The place is run by some Turkish people and it shows in the cooking. (Why oh why don't they turn it into a decent Turkish eatery?) I was there last night for a glass of wine and some tapas. None of the wines come by the glass except for the house white. Ok so that's not so bad you might say. I agree and I can live with that. But the problem was the food.

I ordered some Spanish tortilla and was expecting a thick chunky slice of real Spanish omelette stuffed with potatoes and onions, and instead got a flat round mini pancake dotted with peppers here and there. When the manager brought it over I immediately asked what it was. He told it me it was the tortilla. I said that it wasn't tortilla and he had the cheek to tell me that he had already told the kitchen that, but they didn't listen. My answer was to tell him to take it away and train his staff.

The spicy chicken wings were equally bad. They were pale grey imitations of what you would normally get in a decent tapas bar. Somebody had cooked them on their own, probably in a microwave, and then poured a sauce on top that was sitting on top of them like a lump of porridge. They hadn't even bothered to pretend that they had been cooked in the sauce and made sure they were nicely coated. The Asturian beef and pork stew was straight out of a tin. And I could only find two bits of pork in there. The rest was lumps of disgusting fat and a bit of black sausage that crumbled when exposed to the air. The calamari were frozen but edible and the grilled halloumi cheese (real Spanish bars wouldn't have this on the menu), was only grilled on one side and was served with three chunks of tomato.

Service was ok and they were polite and took things away and off the bill when I complained. They had some nice touches: they served a small plate of fruit at the end, but it was a mean one of just slices of orange and apple, and some complimentary drinks that were poor quality.

14 Jun 2009 09:02