Opera Tavern

All four Salt Yard Group Restaurants & Bars specialise in Italian and Spanish Tapas, all of which have a different interior style, atmosphere and menus.

Salt Yard Group | Tapas Restaurants & Bars in Central London

http://www.saltyardgroup.co.uk

Opera Tavern - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens

Bang opposite the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a former pub that's now a offshoot - in what's essentially a high-quality bistro format - of the Salt Yard/Dehesa tapas empire; its attractions for Covent Garden lunchers and theatre-goers are self-evident.

Until recently, the rule was pretty simple: Covent Garden restaurants were for dumb tourists and theatre-goers.

The landords here also own the site of Soho's popular Dehesa, and they encouraged their tenants to consider opening here in Covent Garden too.

The many fans of Dehesa - and of the original member of the group, Salt Yard, in Fitzrovia - will find few surprises in the formula at this operation which is named a 'tavern' and which describes itself as a 'restaurant and tapas bar'.

The wide-ranging menu mainly has a Hispanic sensibility (without being classically Spanish), and distinguishes between 'tapas' and 'charcuterie', but everything could really simply be described as 'small plates'.

Opera Tavern, London WC2, restaurant review - Telegraph

By sheer good fortune I had a companion, D, who goes to Spain four or five times a year and is already an admirer of the Salt Yard, where these proprietors started out.

Sorry, to return to our own food: the courgette flowers, deep-fried with goat's cheese and drizzled with honey (£7.55), are already famous from the proprietors' other restaurant, Dehesa.

Visually it was a tame affair (the Spanish are wont to arrive with a whole octopus and a pair of scissors), but taste it and close your eyes, D said, and you could be right next to the sea under a beaming Spanish sun.

There's plenty of choice, including fabada asturiana, a rich bean stew with black pudding and saffron (£6.95) Bowls and artefacts made by Andalusian artisans add colour to this bustling tapas bar.

A popular dish is gambas pil pil, roasted prawns served sizzling in olive oil with fresh chilli and garlic (£5.45) This deli sells an array of Welsh produce beside Spanish meats and French cheeses, which all feature in the tapas served to communal tables in the light-flooded restaurant.

Opera Tavern restaurant review 2011 September London | Spanish ...

The restaurant is spread over two floors, with a bar and tables downstairs and a further seating area upstairs  I have now had several meals here, and the cooking standard is consistently good.

The mainly Spanish and Italian wine list had plenty of selections under £40 (some as low as £17), with wines such as Poderi Colla Riesling 2009 at £39 for a wine you can find in the shops for around £12, Honora Vera 2009 at £18 for a £5 wine, the excellent Vino Tondonia 2001 at a somewhat steep £59 for a wine that can be found for £15, and Roda 1 2004 at £76.60 for a wine that retails at around £33.

There are a few more ambitious wines at relatively kind mark-up levels, such as the divine Vega Sicilia Unico 1998 at £295 for a wine that costs £187 in the shops, or the Borgogno Riserva Barolo 1982 at £140 compared to a retail price of around £79.

The dish of the night for me was the Iberico mini burger (£5.50), made with lovely Iberico pork and flavoured with a little foie gras, served in a little brioche bun; this was served with a few mild green chillies on the side (15/20).

This dish worked well, the artichokes having good taste, the egg providing some richness, the vinaigrette cutting through the richness (14/20).

Opera Tavern, 23 Catherine Street, London WC2 | The Independent

And the charming Cambio de Tercio on Old Brompton Road in west London is probably the best Spanish restaurant in London, though last time I was there Prince Harry turned up with Guy Pelly and a phalanx of blondes, which caused me to choke on my manchego.

The pork belly is again wonderful; a lamb leg with pumpkin gnocchi, super-salty anchovies and brown butter and mint (£6.50) is beautifully weighted; hot and crunchy courgette flowers stuffed with oozing, unrestrainable goat's cheese and drizzled with honey (£7.55) is another welcome refugee; a braised ox cheek with roast parsnips and purée, thyme, and pickled walnuts (£8) throbs with flavour; and the grilled, fatty, lurid Iberico presa (pork shoulder) is cleverly cut through with capers, shallots and lemon.

It's hard, too, to see how £4.25 could be better spent on a night out in London than on these stunning grilled scallops, with pungent butternut-squash purée, shallots, truffle dressing, and – a winning addition – migas, or Spanish breadcrumbs.

Scores: 1-3 stay home and cook, 4 needs help, 5 does the job, 6 flashes of promise, 7 good, 8 special, can't wait to go back, 9-10 as good as it gets Opera Tavern, 23 Catherine Street, London WC2, tel: 020 7836 3680.

£150 for four, including three bottles of wine Off the beaten track, yet located in the centre of Manchester, this stalwart Deansgate tapas bar offers genuine Spanish buzz A revelation – this tapas bar in a cheery former boozer is superb – though it's been difficult to get a table since its success on Gordon Ramsay's F Word Doing well under new management (if perhaps a bit chaotic), this stylish tapas bar makes for a funky find – especially in a city centre rather dominated by chains

Opera Tavern, London WC2, restaurant review - Telegraph

By sheer good fortune I had a companion, D, who goes to Spain four or five times a year and is already an admirer of the Salt Yard, where these proprietors started out.

Sorry, to return to our own food: the courgette flowers, deep-fried with goat's cheese and drizzled with honey (£7.55), are already famous from the proprietors' other restaurant, Dehesa.

Visually it was a tame affair (the Spanish are wont to arrive with a whole octopus and a pair of scissors), but taste it and close your eyes, D said, and you could be right next to the sea under a beaming Spanish sun.

There's plenty of choice, including fabada asturiana, a rich bean stew with black pudding and saffron (£6.95) Bowls and artefacts made by Andalusian artisans add colour to this bustling tapas bar.

A popular dish is gambas pil pil, roasted prawns served sizzling in olive oil with fresh chilli and garlic (£5.45) This deli sells an array of Welsh produce beside Spanish meats and French cheeses, which all feature in the tapas served to communal tables in the light-flooded restaurant.

Restaurant: Opera Tavern, London WC2 | John Lanchester | Food ...

At the moment, the big thing in restaurant food is for professionally executed versions of cooking that is faux-casual, pretend-rough, too cool to be comfort food, but not the opposite of comfort food.

Now it is a bar-with-food downstairs and a restaurant-with-booking upstairs, run by the crew behind two of London's most successful new Spanish restaurants, Salt Yard and Dehesa.

This outshone the other meat dishes, such as salt marsh lamb with pumpkin gnocchi and salted anchovies, or a grilled skewer of flank steak with ceps.

One or two other dishes were startlingly acidic by contrast with the mellow meat flavours: mackerel escabeche with roast beets was very sharp, as was a salad of salsify, chestnuts and potatoes.

Still, Opera Tavern is good news in an area that has long been short on restaurants appealing to anyone other than theatregoers on the verge of hypoglycaemia.

Opera Tavern | Restaurants in Covent Garden, London

Despite growing competition, the Opera Tavern remains one of Covent Garden's best dining options and among London’s top tapas restaurants.

Formerly a pub, it’s split into a slightly charmless upstairs restaurant and a cosy, mirror-backed bar at street level.

The latter has been stylishly updated with chocolate leather bar stools, copper spotlights and an open grill; the main kitchen is in the beer cellar.

The signature burger of juicy ibérico pork and foie gras remains deservedly popular, though more inventive combinations better showcase the kitchen’s delicate touch and careful sourcing of ingredients.

Opera Tavern is part of the Salt Yard Group, along with Dehesa in Soho and Salt Yard in Fitzrovia.