Meson La Pepa — Restaurant in Kirklees

I really would love to recommend this place, but I cannot. It does have potential to improve, and I wish it all the best.

The setting is good, informal yet impressive. Unfortunately it is let down by the food.

From the specials menu we ordered a roasted figs tapa, plus a chicken and black pudding tapa.

The figs were delsih, and we would happily have ordered them again.

The black pudding and chicken tapa was disappointing. Overall its flavour was fine, if not underwhelming. Were it to be judged on flavour alone, it could be described as pleasant, yet bordering on the insipid. Its texture however was poor. The chicken was dry, which could be forgiven were it not for the even dryer black pudding. This was not morcilla de cebolla black pudding. Instead they had sliced a thin, dry, big, round wedge of Lancashire black pudding, that would not be out of place on an English fried breakfast plate! Without accounting for culinary ignorance, there really is no excuse for this. Spanish onion infused black pudding is nothing like the English variety, other than nominally being crafted from pig's blood. For those confused, it would be as bizarre as mixing a dehydrated and damaged chorizo sausage into a Yorkshire pudding and having the nerve to call it toad in the hole. Spanish morcilla de cebolla has been readily available in England for almost 20 years…  up the menu price a quid or two, and use the genuine stuff please.

The marinated anchovies were sadly our second favourite tapa. They weren't home marinated in a garlic and parsley escaveche or anything, just regular deli bought anchovies, which were perfectly fine.

The croquetas de jamón were truly the worst experience of the day. Vile. Both my mother and I quickly and unceremoniously regurgitated our single bites of this abomination back onto the rest of the stodgy pile on the plate. Pure doughy stodge, no flavour. Croquetas are not as easy to make, as say an omelette, or some grilled prawns. That being said, it's not as difficult as pastry or soufflés etc. Mine turn out ten times better, and I am not a cook by any means. These were the worst croquetas we had ever had… though I imagine they would have made excellent ammunition!

The calamares a la romana were just about average and the chorizo a la sidra was edible (but nowhere near good as any abuela worth their weight would rustle up for you in a minute at home).

The service was good and friendly on arrival, if not a little too over-attentive and rushed for my liking (but at this point I am just dictating my stream of consciousness). Toward the end of lunch the service was absent, making us wait ten minutes or so to leave.

We eventually set off on our own accord to pay at the bar, on the way out. My mother is a blunt Yorkshire woman and shared to the waiter that we were unable to swallow even a mouthful of the cannon-ball croquetas. He shrugged, said nothing of it, and charged us all the same.

The house white wine was tart and flavourless (one can almost always judge a restaurant from the quality of the house wine served… such a reliable indicator).

We had eaten here earlier this year. At the time they had a seafood special menu. The tapas were notably better then.

The quality of this place could be turned around in a month: Send the cooks for a long, educational, culinary weekend hol to Spain, to sample simple, ordinary, everyday food. Order stock from authentic Spanish suppliers and up menu prices a quid or two. As easy as, Pim! Pam! Pum! As they'd say in Spain.

¡Ojalá que...

Booked a table for 7:30 pm last week, got there at 7:25, had to wait 15 minutes at the bar, my wife had a sore as she had to recline on the bar There was a gentleman there i think it’s the manager, no apologies, barely spoke any english, when they finally cleared up the table it had bits of food on it still The rest of the staff were friendly and welcoming, i didn’t appreciate the fact that they kept insisting on try to have us order more drinks and constantly asking one by one The waitress that took my order was very hasty as she rushed me and neglected the fact that i wanted all of my food to come together, i had bread for starters and waited to long for the main after they cleared up my table The main course was a disaster, the waitress that brought the tapas spilled most of the sauce on the board as she struggled by carrying two tapas loaded boards on her own which is a very unprofessional way of carrying and serving food to costumers the paella was anything but fresh, very chewy and the croquettes were cold as if they came straight out of the fridge I figured since this place is busy, they’d have fresh ingredients but that wasn’t the case We barely touched our food and when the waitress cleared our table she asked weather we like the food or not, i gave her my honest opinion and she thought i was joking, she smiled as she gave me a very insincere apology and left We were asked for dessert twice after already ordering on the first time, it was well presented, tasty but very small portion served with table spoons Overall a terrible experience regarding food and service quality, i wish the management can do...

A restaurant which is nicely decorated and looks very welcoming, but that's all I can really say in favour of this restaurant. The menu is not amazing with rubbish vegetable options, unless you want one of the salads, or potatoes. The only dish which was actually any good was the chorizo in red wine sauce. We also had fried calamari (tiny portion even for a tapas dish) which was soggy and didn't come with any sort of dip; goats cheese salad which was like a 1970's salad (mainly iceberg with half a tomato, a couple of sticks of pepper and loads of red onion) and very watery (maybe invest in a salad spinner?) with no dressing; halloumi salad which was similar to the above, but to call it a halloumi salad is a joke as there were maybe three tiny cubes of it. The other dishes were mediocre at best. Part way through our meal a guitarist arrived to play live music (using an amp), he was really good, but so loud that it was impossible to talk, so we basically rushed to finish our meal in silence. The...