Eat Out London!The Little Taperia
Welcome to The Little Taperia, a Spanish tapas bar and restaurant in Tooting, South London. We serve delicious Spanish tapas, wines and cocktails.
The Little Taperia - Spanish Tapas Bar and Restaurant
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The Little Taperia, 143 Tooting High Street, Tooting, London, SW17 ...
Reviews | Bordelaise
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But if you’re in for a fantastic meal with high quality food, prepared in a classically French manner, here you go.
France and French food are two of my favourite things, and I try to visit Normandy whenever I can – it’s not glamorous and it’s not on postcards, but it’s honest, great fun, and I feel really at home there, despite my atrocious French language skills.
Because I am a massive French cheese fan (Angelo and I hit it off right away) I also decided to start with the Bordelaise cheese platter.
If you’re not a steak eater, Bordelaise will still try to cater to you, with a vegetarian dish of truffled mac and cheese which is raved about on the online reviews, or braised ox cheeks with Bordelaise sauce and mashed potato, or a salad of green beans, heritage tomato and shallots with a Dijon dressing.
Bordelaise is a fantastic place – a real gem – and I’ll always be jealous of the residents of Tooting for having such an authentic French Bistro right in the heart of the high street.
The Little Taperia, Tooting
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Top 10 things you need to know about The Little Taperia restaurant: 1) It’s small, in an intimate sense, and not in a ship-in-glass-bottle way, where every time you turn your head you hit the person sat behind you in the face with your hair and get caught up in each others conversations.
4) The restaurant has two rooms – the front has its own bar and high chair tables for post-work drinks, or pre-drinking-drinks, while the back room has an open kitchen and feels altogether more sheltered from the steadily increasing bustle of Tooting; the home to Sadiq Khan, no less.
OK, the gin isn’t creamy but it tastes like you always imagine when you watch a TV advert for it.
6) Many foodies - myself included - struggle with tapas in London, suspicious of the waiter when he recommends ordering 5 or 6 dishes to share.
10) This South London tapas restaurant may not have a flashy, highly sought-after postcode but it’s what’s on the inside that counts, eh?
The Little Taperia, restaurant review: A south London pet shop has ...
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Around the same time, The Little Bar opened up in Mitcham Road, run by Madeleine Lim, who used to commission articles for The Independent Magazine.
Now, just as a new wine bar is being constructed at the Trafalgar Arms, look what's happened.
In a perfect storm of neighbourliness, Mr Antippa and Ms Lim have combined forces to open a tapas restaurant, right next door to Mr Jones's chicken run.
The Spanish chef, Javier Vincente Rejas, is from Valencia by way of the Hilton hotel chain and Rules restaurant.
A lovely climax to a succession of intensely satisfying little treats from this Spanish diamond in the (decreasingly) rough environs of SW17.
The Little Taperia, London, Tooting. Book now!
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The Little Taperia occupies the former premises of a pet shop along Tooting High Street, but it’s now a bar and Spanish tapas restaurant with the kind of pedigree that eschews doggy-bag takeaway – though the proprietors are happy to pack any excess ordering up for overambitious diners.
Established in in May 2015 by South London hospitality pioneers Hikmat Antippa (Meza) and Madeleine Lim (The Little Bar), it sits next door to one of Nick Jones’ eateries (Soho House, Chicken Shop) and has quickly become an emblem for the local Tooting restaurant renaissance.
And it looks as good as it promises and as good as the food tastes – bentwood stools are serried against a bar decorated with Middle Eastern tiles, the front dining room features weathered wood panels scavenged from the 1940s-era Bush House, and if you’re waiting for a table – not that you’ll have to with a Quandoo reservation – you can take cover under a corrugated iron roof.
Reserve a table for rustic tapas and settle in with The Little Taperia’s considered pre-dinner drinks recommendations – the SW17 Cava (brandy de Jerez, angostura bitters and a lump of sugar), the Cava Royale (crème de cassis, cava), or the classic Aperol Spritz (Aperol, cava, and a slice of orange) – while you decide between morcilla-stuffed Scotch eggs with piquillo pepper chutney, spinach Catalana with pine nuts and raisins, the escalivada (Catalan-style grilled vegetables on toasted sourdough), platters of Iberian meats and Spanish cheese, and much, much more.
The Little Taperia represents some of the best tapas in Tooting and, if we concede to the critical acclaim, London – reservations are essential.
The Little Tapería | Restaurants in Tooting, London
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Yet talk of mortgages surrounded us at this tapas bar in Tooting, as the area’s seen a huge influx of new-to-London renters and first-homers.
Geronimo Inns is currently converting a huge local landmark, The Trafalgar Arms, into a trendy wine bar.
A side passage and yard at the back have been covered with corrugated plastic roofing to make a beach shack-style extension; a marble-topped bar at the front dispenses simple but good cocktails; and a long corridor-like series of rooms connects the two, with an open kitchen halfway along.
A simple pan con tomate, sourdough bread rubbed with garlic and spread with crushed fresh tomatoes, relies on prime ingredients, and the version here matches anything we’ve eaten on the Iberian peninsula.
The appearance is striking, and the metallic taste of the filling adds an earthy edge to the seafood; textures and flavours of sea and land meet on a plate.