Barrafina

Barrafina is a collection of authentic Spanish Tapas bars in Central London

Barrafina | Modern, Spanish Tapas Bars in Covent Garden and Soho

Barrafina is an authentic Spanish tapas bar owned and operated by restaurateurs Sam & Eddie Hart.

There are three Barrafinas in London; the original site is on Soho’s Dean Street, the other two are on Adelaide Street and Drury Lane in Covent Garden.

Each restaurant has an open kitchen, a beautiful marble-topped bar where guests can sit and watch the chefs at work and stylish red leather stools.

The a la carte menus comprise authentic regional dishes from around Spain and there is also a daily changing specials menu unique to each restaurant.

We take bookings for groups of 8 to 32 in our private dining space at Adelaide Street and 8 to 28 people at Drury Lane.

http://barrafina.co.uk

Tapas bar Barrafina is named Britain's best restaurant - Telegraph

Barrafina in Adelaide Street, which received rave reviews when it opened last year, was awarded the top gong at the National Restaurant Awards.

The eatery is the second Barrafina venue in the capital, with a third expected to open later this year, and is headed by Spanish chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho.

• London could be getting its first tea pub The awards proved a good year for female chefs.

Barrafina is the first restaurant with a female head chef to ever win the awards., while the highest-climbing venue was Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London, where Clare Smyth, the first female chef in the UK to be awarded three Michelin stars, is chef patron.

Barrafina Adelaide Street eptomises what a good restaurant should be – it is inclusive, vibrant and fun with excellent service and a great buzz about it.

Barrafina, London, WC2, restaurant review - Telegraph

This new branch, in Adelaide Street, is under the direction of chef Nieves Barragán and is the kind of simple, stunning space that makes your own kitchen look like a medieval hovel.

These days there are more restaurants with open kitchens than you could shake a ladle at; but it’s rare to feel so fully in the thick of things as you do at Barrafina.

The chefs work as if wired in series to a single brain – one dollops sauce on a plate, another flips a mackerel onto it, a third scatters parsley over the top.

Fast and furious: you watch the food being prepared at Barrafina (RII SCHROER) Our first bite of food is pan con tomate, a simple dish that can often be disappointingly bland, especially if the tomatoes aren’t flavoursome.

I could eat it all day, but we’ve already been presented with our next dish – a whole, tender squid from the specials board, striped with faint golden scorch marks from the grill, served on a vinegary salad made with puntarelle (a kind of chicory).

Barrafina Adelaide Street | Soho, Fitzrovia, Covent Garden ...

"It is true that you can rack up a bill of fairly frightening proportions at the Barrafinas, in fact at any Hart Bros place (they also run Quo Vadis) but that's not technically because anything they do is overpriced.

It's simply a direct result of the fact that from the moment you sit down you have such a good time you never want to leave, and will try any trick in the book to prolong the happiness."

Fay Maschler's five-star review of Barrafina Adelaide Street | London ...

The two Barrafinas are the work of brothers Sam and Eddie Hart — also owners of Fino and Quo Vadis — who were inspired by the tapas bar Cal Pep in Barcelona.

Sam Hart had said to me that he supposed the menu at the Covent Garden Barrafina (they call it Covent Garden, it isn’t really) was going to be pretty much like the Soho original, but the grip, energy and inspiration of Nieves means that almost 80 per cent of the list differs.

It is a joy to observe but the greater pleasure is being on the receiving end of dishes such as milk-fed lamb’s brain — the sort of lovable softness inside a frangible coating that we imagine our own nervous system to be — and then braised ox tongue with crushed potatoes.

If the Guild of Restaurant Critics allows, I can also point you towards dishes such as wonderful arroz de marisco (seafood rice), classic tortilla, bosomy deep-fried stuffed courgette flowers and white asparagus with a sauce the Spanish may call Maria Rosa, which we enjoyed on the evening we didn’t pay.

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Tapas bar Barrafina is named Britain's best restaurant - Telegraph

Barrafina in Adelaide Street, which received rave reviews when it opened last year, was awarded the top gong at the National Restaurant Awards.

The eatery is the second Barrafina venue in the capital, with a third expected to open later this year, and is headed by Spanish chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho.

• London could be getting its first tea pub The awards proved a good year for female chefs.

Barrafina is the first restaurant with a female head chef to ever win the awards., while the highest-climbing venue was Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London, where Clare Smyth, the first female chef in the UK to be awarded three Michelin stars, is chef patron.

Barrafina Adelaide Street eptomises what a good restaurant should be – it is inclusive, vibrant and fun with excellent service and a great buzz about it.

Barrafina, London, WC2, restaurant review - Telegraph

This new branch, in Adelaide Street, is under the direction of chef Nieves Barragán and is the kind of simple, stunning space that makes your own kitchen look like a medieval hovel.

These days there are more restaurants with open kitchens than you could shake a ladle at; but it’s rare to feel so fully in the thick of things as you do at Barrafina.

The chefs work as if wired in series to a single brain – one dollops sauce on a plate, another flips a mackerel onto it, a third scatters parsley over the top.

Fast and furious: you watch the food being prepared at Barrafina (RII SCHROER) Our first bite of food is pan con tomate, a simple dish that can often be disappointingly bland, especially if the tomatoes aren’t flavoursome.

I could eat it all day, but we’ve already been presented with our next dish – a whole, tender squid from the specials board, striped with faint golden scorch marks from the grill, served on a vinegary salad made with puntarelle (a kind of chicory).

Barrafina, London WC2 – restaurant review | Life and style | The ...

We've been perched on our bar stools at the new Barrafina for hours (the owners say it's in Covent Garden, but it's more like Charing Cross).

It's a tapas bar, there are no reservations, but that's another of the many beauties of this place: you come in fancying a smattering of expertly cut Ibérico ham and seven courses later you're looking at a sizable bill and ortiguillas (sea anemones) or deep-fried lamb's brain.

Well, it's delicious, in the way that only something crumbed and fried, topped with a pinenut-studded tapenade and marooned in a punchy, vivid tomato sauce can be.

I've eaten lambs' brains raw, sliced wafer-thin in a little oil, lemon juice and salt, so the unique, meaty-pannacotta quality shone through.

Perhaps that German word could be Whatever: if you see me in brilliant Barrafina, give me a wide berth.

OFM Awards 2016 best restaurant: Barrafina, Adelaide Street | Life ...

At Barrafina, Adelaide Street, just south of London’s Covent Garden, it’s first come first served.

Mohacho opened the first with her business partners Eddie and Sam Hart in London’s Soho a short walk away in 2007.

The Hart brothers are rare in the restaurant business for being so completely open about the inspiration for their own ventures.

Inspired Hart may have been, but the project took time, involving a detour through the first business he opened with his brother Eddie, a standard Spanish restaurant called Fino, now closed.

You can perch at the bar in the window with a chilled glass of cava, a bowl of salted marcona almonds before you, and watch the kitchen at work, calm in the knowledge that it will soon be your turn on one of those red-leather-topped counter stools; that soon you will have the chance to rampage through Nieves Barragán Mohacho’s gutsy, inventive and utterly compelling menu.