Tapas Brindisa Borough

Food is fabulous and never fails to deliver a happy occasion.

DISGUSTED! I have just been to your London Bridge branch for lunch with a friend who suggested to go there because it was too cold to stay outside in Borough Market. I agreed to go to Brindisa because it seemed a simple/normal option for a quick lunch but now I really regret it. I had been to your restaurants before, maybe one year or so ago and I found it overpriced, hence I never returned until today. However, after our lunch today I never expected we would be so disappointed and that we would feel completely ROBBED. At the end of our very mediocre lunch today, both my friend and I were SHOCKED at the bill: £59 for one portion of bread (bread!) with tomato, 1 small portion of chicken, 1 tiny portion of pork, 1 small portion of jamon (£20!- unbelievable), tap water and 2 coffees. I am still very hungry and no dish was worth it. I work in finance and I am fortunate enough to make a very good earning but I still have the intelligence to value the things in life. I honestly think your restaurant is a DISGRACE, a complete RIP OFF and offers very MEDIOCRE quality. It is clear that you are taking advantage of your good location and the fact that tapas are fashionable in London at the moment. You will never see us again in any of your branches and I will make sure that all my friends and colleagues know about my views.

Delicious food, friendly environment, easy to get to, very good value.

great wine, great food, i love the olives stuffed with oranges.

So how's the original outpost of growing tapas juggernaut of Brindisa doing since I last visited? Not as well as I'd hoped unfortunately… Situated on the corner of Borough Market's southern corner, no bookings Brindesa was always a tough (and tiny) table to score, light wood interior filled with souls exiting the market laden with goodies, unable to wait until their home before sampling them. The unlucky masses would look on through the floor to ceiling windows and resolve to turn up earlier next week. A recent midweek trip to the neighbourhood let me pop in for lunch on one of the less screwily busy days for the restaurant before the market next door grunts into life on a Friday. The menu is still a organic shopper's wet dream, everything veggie sourced from the nearby stalls while meats and spices come from the Brindesa shop, hotfoot from the best suppliers in their Spanish homeland. The joy has always been that you don't want to wait until you get home from the market, mainly because what the kitchen can do with the same handful of ingredients is infinitely better than anything you could manage. We've been spoilt by Jose, and the jamon croquetas he now serves up on Bermonsey Street. Those are light, fresh and heaven sent, these lumpen cigars of gluey mash under a too thick oily carapace just don't cut the mustard. Huevos Rotos – broken eggs over fried potatoes and Iberico pork sobrasada – is unevenly cooked. Soft slices of spud seemingly decanted into a lukewarm serving dish, the egg just the wrong side of soft and the sobrasada, a thickly spiced tomato based sauce, huddled in one corner under a slice of waxen potato. A great idea, and one I'm looking forward to borrowing for an inevitably hungover brunch, but there's nothing here any reasonably home chef couldn't improve on. Sautéed chicken livers with an onion and caper dressing were fine, and well cooked. If I'd just taken a plate of that with a muscular minerally and obscenely dry sherry, I'd no doubt be hurrahing from the rooftops. Compared to a recent revisit to gracefully ageing Barrafina, the team at Tapas Brindisa have got some way to go to regain their crown. If you're in the area, nip round to Bermondsey Street and see what their old boss Jose Pizzaro is up to at his brace of eponymous restaurants, either one of them easily has the measure of Brindisa I'm sad to say…

There's something about Brindisa that I still like. There are many tapas bars in London now, most of them pretty nondescript and OK for a quick snack, not very expensive but nothing special. This one near London Bridge fills up very quickly at lunch time, so if I'm round there early I'll go in but would have to walk by later on. The quality of the food I've always found to be excellent, with regular appearances from jamon iberico, olives, cheeses, tortillas, breads, salads and daily specials. For me it's the jamon croquettas, possibly the best in London, they seem to be freshly made and not from a frozen package, the soft savoury bechamel with little chunks of mature ham inside crispy breadcrumbed cases, simply served in sets of 4 and which I can hardly bear to share. And you can go round the corner to Brindisa Borough Market to stock up on paprika, saffron, marcona almonds and several types of chorizo. But what is it about the wooden bench seating at the back? You get a good view of what's going on but the up-tilted seat cuts across the back of the legs and then you go numb. Good job the service is quick and tapas is meant to be snack-and-go. If you want to linger be sure to get another table.

When the Brindisa opened its restaurant in London bridge a few years ago, it was by far the best tapas / Spanish restaurant in London. It was an example and a benchmark to all other tapas places. For far too long, Londoners idea of a tapas bar was la tasca or other poor so-called Spanish / tapas restaurants. Brindisa was a breath of fresh air. Great ingredients, top wines and stunning food. I don’t know maybe with popularity comes complacency. I have definitely noticed a gradual deterioration at Brindisa. The standard is no longer where it was. The price has increased but the quality of food and end product has declined. I was on a date on Friday night gone and I decided to go there. I had the one of cheapest Rioja, the chops, the peppers (pardons), Spanish omelette, croquettes and the prawns. The final bill was £76 which I thought was pretty punchy. Bar the Spanish omelette and the prawns (only ok), everything else was pretty average. The chops (only 2) was priced at £9.75. Once big and juicy, what we were served was shrivelled up tiny meatless chops. The little peppers, if we got 10 we were lucky at £4.50. Brindisa is a quirky little place. It’s always busy and I have never had problem with the wait. The atmosphere and the location is great. Its just such a shame, to see a place that was once so good now being very average and dishing out over priced sub-standard tapas. I don’t usually write negative reviews. I was on a date at the time and didn’t want to make a scene complaining at the restaurant. I use to love brindisa, but I have now had 3 / 4 ok and very average meals so I don’t think I am going to return.

Tapas bars in Spain are that: bars. In the UK, we tend to think of them as destination restaurants (think the very excellent Fino). Maybe this is why there have been so many people let down by Tapas Brindisa which is, after all, pretty authentically Spanish. It has a bar complete with stools. It has bustle. The cutlery comes in old pepper tins. You cannot book, but you can sit outside on the pavement. In fact all it lacks is rows of hams hanging from the ceiling, gently oozing fat into those white plastic cones to make it properly Spanish. I am guessing that there is a health and safety issue with this, although it doesn’t seem to have overly harmed our Iberian colleagues. The food is basic tapas, like jamon (we had the selection of Serrano, Iberica and Bellota, all very pleasant, growing in strength from left to right), which came with the obligatory tomato bread. There was also piping hot ham croquettes and some spicy chorizo on toast. Nothing special, nothing outstanding. Just good honest tapas in a nice friendly bar. Sort of what tapas should be, yet in this country rarely is. Were there to be a complaint, it would be the price. It is not that the food is any more expensive than, say, Fino, it is just that Fino is a real destination restaurant and Tapas Brindisa is a real tapas bar. That cannot be right: £30 a head for what was a light snack is just plain wrong. Far better to save your pennies and go to Seville: start in the old town behind the Alcazar and just wander. Stand at the bar. Sup a cruzcampo here, taste a tapas there; each bar has a speciality that brings people in, so just follow the locals. A bit like a Spaniard coming to London and doing a pub crawl.