Our first visit to Boqueria was 3 years ago. Gosh, three years already! I still remember that Friday evening, Neal and I were not sure, no, let me rephrase that, I was not up for going out. Why? Well WINTER! Listen, I am from the tropics, I don’t do cold well lol. Anyway, off we went, and I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. Boqueria is a Spanish restaurant serving tapas style food with ingredients sourced from Spain ensuring an authentic Spanish experience and traditional cuisine.
I usually don’t tend to take much of the décor of places we eat in and this is because well, we are about the food first more than anything else. Having said that, I did like the baskets on the ceiling décor here at Boqueria, it was interesting.
We had several dishes which included entrees, small traditional dishes, meat, fish and cured ham! In hindsight, we ordered dishes from every section of the menu and Listennnnnn!!!!! The meat dish? OMG the meat dish… I sure didn’t see that one coming. But first, the entrees and traditional dishes were typical small Spanish plates – aceitunas (marinated olives), patatas bravas (fried potatoes), croquetas (croquets), chorizo al horno (chorizo with cider, yummy), calamari, gambas al ajilo (king prawns, galic, piquillo peppers and olive oil), and yes, they all tasted yummy! And these were decent portions in that you would be satisfied with this and not necessarily order like a main if it’s a drink type thing. To be fair that would have been us but you know what we are like, we decided a few more dishes were needed to accompany the wine (hey don’t be judging lol).
The cured ham here is special. It is Iberian ham from acorn fed and hand carved. I mean like literally hand carved. Once you have decided on how much of it you want from the menu, the hand carver sets to work, slicing thin pieces of perfectly cured ham. Dang it was good, the kind of good that you could just spend drinking and munching on this and your night will be LIT lol.
We also sampled a fish and meat course (which we shared) why? I mean, come on now folks, you see how many starters we had? Lol. The fish course was Lubina entera frita en adobo, essentially seabass which had been marinated and fried. It was really tasty because fish can be tricky and the fact that it was prepped and cooked simply just worked. I mean it is fish, no need to be extra with it you know.
The meat course – Cochinillo asado? Boi!! Suckling pig, sweet potato crisps (yep, not fries) apple sauce and lime sorbet. Yes, read that again! First off sorbet? I mean these things should not work together but when I tell you that it did. I really was not sure how the dish was going to be plated up but it turned out nay to shabby. The potato crisps served as a base for the pork as did the apple sauce for the sorbet. Now sorbet and apple sauce? Who would have thought? Trust me, it works! The pork was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside and went so good with the sauce and sorbet.
Pudding was a simple affair – a walnut brownie with white chocolate ice cream and caramel sauce that was just scrumptious.
This was the cherry on top for me, perfect pudding to end it all.
Salud
Ndidi
