We walked into the restaurant and asked for a table. The waitress said we could choose any, so we chose one near the window and inside a bit so it was cool from the air conditioning. The interior would feel very cool at night, when its full of people and noise. It is defintely more like a bar than a restaurant. I could imagine live music in there and people standing at the bar drinking.
A look at the menu showed lots of tapas and some racion. Quite a lot on the menu sounded good so we decided to try the tasting plate, which the waitress said would contain a lot of the tapas on the menu. We also ordered a couple of tapas and fortunately, those did not double up on the tasting plate.
The Twice Cooked Pork with Apple was delicious. The crunchy skin contrasted with the very moist soft pork. The Lamb Meatballs was good too, with spiced meatballs covered in a tomatoe puree.
The Tasting Plate contained a lot, some were hits and others misses. I liked the Slow Cooked Beef so that it was still very pink. It was nice and moist. The prosciutto was good. The Fried Baby Squid was not good. It tasted very salty and chewy. Goats cheese was nice. My favourite thing were these Falafel type things with a chilli sauce. It totally worked and was the best thing on the platter. The Fried Squid was too oily. The Soft Shell Crab was also too oily and the red cabbage lettuce under it smelt and tasted like it had been doused with sulphuric acid, totally disgusting. Potatoe cubes and a corn ball were good. I don't like olives so didn't touch those.
The desserts were quite good too. The churros were good if you totally doused them in chocolate. Otherwise, I could taste the flouryness (ok I made up this word but you get what I mean) of it. The churros had also exploded (not the right temperature of oil causes this I think) and all looked like pregnant seahorses. The other three items on the Dessert Plate were all too sweet and not that good.
Service was good, as they weren't many customers. There wasn't an atmosphere to speak of due to it being lunch time. The price is a bit too expensive I thought, for lunch anyway. I think I might come back for a dinner, as there are definitely some good dishes on the menu.
Overall Rating: 13/20, Some good dishes.
Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.
I stopped going to Basque a few years ago after a few of the dishes went downhill and the service became wonky. Still it was never too bad.
ReplyDeleteHi Ed, I looked it up in the Good Food Guide after I had already decided to go and it still scored quite well. It's definitely not in the class of Movida and there were some things I didn't like, but a few things were really good still. I might go back.
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