Babil

This was the best tapas I have eaten in the UK! Highlights were oysters which were absolutely delicious, the garlic prawns, and the anchovies. We had a really lovely bottle of orange wine and cocktails were great too. The service was good although I don’t think anybody checked in and asked how the food was whilst we were there, so if we had a complaint we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to give feedback. This being said, the food was near perfect so it wasn’t an issue

Spanish restaurant at a lovely location, however… We ordered multiple dishes, including chipirones, which seems like a pretty large portion on the plate, but the actual baby squids are so tiny that what you are mainly tasting is the paneer only. Patatas bravas are not bad, but didn’t rock our world, the dipping sauce could do a bit more flavour. Gambas al ajillo is a great price-value dish, and quite tasty, and the oysters are lovely too. The grilled octopus had a perfect texture and the white beans purée was absolutely amazing. The thing what we found as a huge problem with pretty much all dishes is the salt. We found everything way too salty. Rock salt is all over the dishes, and as we sat by the counter, we saw the cook not to use salt on the octopus at all (unless they soaked it in salty water previously) however it was still very salty, so as the oyster and the other dishes. We both know that seafood can be salty, but these were way too salty. The service was nice, so as the wine, but chef, if you are working by the counter, where people sitting, and eating, and you need to blow your nose, then please at least wash your hands before handling food again. Glad we were paying already when this has happened. Thanks!

Went there on 2023-05-19 for a casual birthday celebration, most dishes were delicious but a couple of them weren’t executed so well, hence 4 ⭐️ It is a lively and popular restaurant in Stokey, so all the chefs were pretty busy their (open) kitchen all night when we were there. We had to wait for a fair bit of time before we started getting our first dish, luckily we sat by the bar so it was kind of a live entertainment for us to watch food being prepared. While sitting at the bar, I noticed the tortillas often got left unattended on the hot plate that cooked them for long periods of time while the chefs prepared other dishes. I guess that’s why my tortillas with jamón (and the one the couple next to us had) was a bit over-cooked. The pluma ibérica and the pulpo 🐙 were both very tender and flavourful. Also highly recommend the torrija for dessert, that was probably my highlight of the meal.