The Hispanist — Restaurant in England

AWFUL SERVICE! DO NOT GO HERE!

My friend booked our table three weeks in advance stating that she was a vegetarian and would be eating from the website’s vegan menu. (on the website it only says “state you are vegan” when booking, not “pre-order your exact food because we dont have any of it on site”).

We waited 30 MINUTES just to have our drink orders taken, there was only two other parties in the restaurant at the time, so no excuse for the delay. The menus we were given had slight differences so they had obviously given us both new and old ones by accident. My friend asked for the vegetarian/vegan menu and the girl serving us looked confused. she said there was nothing vegetarian but asked if my friend ate fish and went away. she came back and said the only thinng the kitchen could do for her was a “mixed veg taco w red sauce” (ketchup? :s). We said wheres the vegan menu from the website, and she said you should have preordered your exact food when you made the booking (THIS IS NOT STATED ON THEIR WEBSITE 😂😂). We said this isnt on the website and asked if we could speak to someone, hoping a manager would appearbit instead we got the young boy who had been slowly making drinks for everyone but us (a child manager? Owners son?) He was VERY RUDE TO US. This had been 45 minutes sat there drinkless and foodless. He tried to argue with us that we had failed to mention there was a “vegetarian participant” (?) when we made the booking, he then said he hadnt started making our drinks yet and did we still want them 😂😂... so we said becaus weve been waiting 45mins and theyve messed up our vegetarian booking, can we please have the drinks for free. He ran away for a while, then came back smirking (obviously had a laugh about it with the chefs) and said the restaurant had “done nothing wrong”, suggested it was all our fault, and that the restaurant didnt owe us anything. he ended with a patronizing “So its upto you what you decide to do next” .. so rude!!!!! Who speaks to customers like that, what an idiot.

So we decided to leave :) As we left only the waitress apologized, the smirky child manager and cooks ignored us. We felt there was no experienced senior staff on that night to handle the situation properly. We then went to Ambiente where we were treated properly and finally had...

I attended the restaurant with my wife and two daughters aged 14 and 10.

When we entered the dining area, the room was cold despite being a mild autumn day, so much so my wife didn’t want to remove her jacket. Just as things seemed to be warming up with more people in the room, a member of staff opened a window, lowering the temperature again.

The menu is pretentious with single word descriptions of ingredients and mainly in Spanish with no real description of what you might actually be getting. We needed help from the waiting staff to determine what things were and we’re not inexperienced diners or fluent in Spanish (as I suspect most customers are not). The menu is also not child friendly. Not even adult friendly for that matter!

The service was good on the whole, although I would have thought serving staff would be aware of what was not available before we ordered it. It was only after we’d ordered olives that we were told that the restaurant hadn’t received a delivery of them that day.

The quality of the food was generally very good as was the presentation, but pitifully small portions. I know it’s tapas, but the scallop dish had ONE scallop and cost £9!! Simply extortionate! When I told our waiting staff member of my displeasure, the (eventual) feedback was that of the high wholesale cost of hand-dived scallops as opposed to farmed scallops, i.e. take it or leave it.

Overall, despite the food being of good quality and the service being polite and helpful, we will not be returning. My daughters were underwhelmed by the food, despite being adventurous eaters. My wife and I felt it was just very poor value for money and too expensive for what you got. We spent £178 on 7 small tapas dishes, 2 larger dishes (although still relatively small), 1 dessert, 1 bottle of wine, 2 glasses of wine and 2 cocktails. If you do go make sure you’ve got...

Following a quick shopping trip I decided to pay a visit to The Hispanist. I should mention that this visit was entirely on the spur of the moment and I did not book before my visit.

As you walk into paragon arcade, the restaurant offers a gentle distraction from the main street. I've always enjoyed paragon arcade for several reasons, nostalgia brings some good memories of walking through here and The Hispanist is a very welcome addition to these.

I peered tentatively through the window and saw the chefs in their whites, busy hustling and weaving between each other with the urgency that first service brings.

If you've never worked in a kitchen before, you'd probably never notice the synchronicity of movement and sublime ballet that service on a busy night brings.

That's passion for producing great food.

I begin with appreciating this and the effort that goes into the prep work to make this menu happen.

Hannah one of the attentive FOH members organised a seat for me at short notice and recommended some dishes for me to sample. Throughout my meal, she was professionally pleasant and attentive and I felt valued as a customer.

What I had....

CHORIZO IBÉRICO: CURED IBÉRICO CHORIZO

FERREROS DE MORCILLA: BLOOD SAUSAGE | ROAST HAZELNUTS | BLACK APPLE BUTTER

SETAS: WILD MUSHROOMS | ROSEMARY | GARLIC | TOASTED SESAME SEEDS | GREMOLATA | JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE CRISPS

Each one of these dishes were absolutely amazing. The tastes were deliciously complex and exciting which made me say Wow! Quite a few times during my experience eating here.

If you've never been here, please do pay it a visit. You'd be missing out on an unforgettable experience if you didn't. I'll definitely book and go back for a more in depth experience...