La Tasca Spanish Tapas Restaurant

La Tasca Spanish Tapas Restaurant
10/12 Warburton Street
Didsbury
Manchester
M3 2FW
+44 (0) 161 438 0033
http://www.latasca.co.uk/

On a wet Friday lunchtime in October seven of us ventured out to La Tasca, Spanish Tapas restaurant in Didsbury, South Manchester.

La Tasca is a themed restaurant, part of a chain of eight with four more planned to open soon. The restaurant is a large ground floor area, with wooden tables chairs and bar. The effect is a rather psuedo Spanish feel, similar to themed Irish restaurants. You know it is all show but the effect is still quite good. A rather impressive metal spiral staircase leads to a balconied first floor dining room. The waiters all seemed pretty Spanish to us too, adding to the general ambience.

Seven of us studying a menu containg 30 or 40 tapas dishes plus other essential items like paella caused some discussion and dissent about what to order. We decided to put our destiny in the hands of the waiter and just ordered 16 tapas dishes of his choice. Then to add some confusion to the order just created, someone said 'we must have one with mushrooms' then somebody said 'and tortillas'. Very soom we descended into the original argument but settled on 16 tapas including a mushroom one. While we waited we order a couple of pitchers of San Miguel and some baskets of bread.

The food began to arrive and we realised we had a space crisis on the round wooden table. We soon had to employ a nearby vacant table to handle the overflow and empties.

The dishes appeared, spanish sausage, whitebait, calamari, aubergine, chicken, lamb (a bit like spanish hot pot), cheese, potatoes, tortillas, paella, salad. Perversely the much anticipated mushroom dish never arrived, but that barely seemed to matter. The food was very good and the portions were surprisingly ample.

Between us we managed to polish the whole lot off plus another pitcher of San Miguel. The bill came to £75 which seemed most reasonable. We all pitched in an left a tip for the hard working waiter who looked after us properly and in excellent humour.

Verdict - Excellent value for money and notably decent food. A wide selection available in an atmospheric surrounding. I believe that in the evenings it is immensely popular and a wait seated at the bar is almost mandatory. I never asked about table booking, but we have found their web site and the email address and phone numbers are listed above. Great fun.

Update

La Tasca Update1

La Tasca Update 2