Barsito — Restaurant in London

What a lovely underrated special place this is tucked away in the corner of Venn street.

Popped in on a Saturday night in a whim because we fancied having something nice. I love tapas as it’s a great interactive sharing experience and wonderful for a Saturday night casual date.

Trying to do spontaneous dinner within a hour on Sat Eve in London is always a nightmare but here we found it easy to get a table at 7:30pm. NB: It definitely got busier by 8:30pm with queues starting to form. Barsito don’t take reservations on Friday or Saturday evening and it’s clear to see why.

Wine - Went for a bottle of Paso A Paso Tempranillo - was nice.

Food - Totally delicious! We loved every single plate. (Well, all bar one which was okay but the others blew it out the water) all plates came out fairly quickly in quick succession, so we should probably have staggered our orders a little more, in hindsight!

We ordered: Bread - to mop up the various sauces - a must

Gambas al Ajilio - Prawns, garlic and chilli sauce - always a staple!

Patatas Bravas - potato chopped up into small cubes, in a tomato sauce and some Aioli on top! Again, a must.

Croquetas de Jamón - Ham Croquettes with aioli again. A must!

Meatballs - Pork and beef meatballs in tomato sauce, and some more potatoes slices underneath. Good.

“Heaven on a plate” - soft Ox Cheek with yup more slices of potatoes and delicious sauce. - deffo get this. It’s clear the meat had been slow cooking for a while as it was very delicate and juicy, soaking up the sauces.

Sardines - Boneless Sardines, with balsamic vinegar, on soft bread with tomato and olive oil base. Side of rocket. - must get this.

Special - Rabbit with Sweet Potato. - this was the special for the evening - it was okay, but it was a little overdone and not quite to our taste. But hey, one out of literally everything else is a great score sheet!

Prices are really reasonable when sharing for two, we ate all the above, plus a bottle of wine and service which came to just under £100.

Service was great, they checked in on us at the right times and were very nice.

Left feeling very full and very content!

Definitely pop in to Barsito the next time...

I can’t believe this place has 4 stars…absolutely the worst tapas place I’ve ever encountered…there’s no point in booking, as the manager does not pay no attention to bookings nor have a polite attitude about it. The food is okay but not worth the money. Very small platters for the prices we paid for.. some dishes Ive seen that they use the microwave for such as the tortilla. when I asked the man about the wines, he didn’t have a clue and is very loud when talking to other customers. I kept hearing “I’m gay” a lot and when I tried to get his attention, he kept talking to this one table in particular…Honestly this is such a small restaurant that it shouldn’t be so hard to have some decent customer service. There’s only one cubicle which smelt a lot and the floors were wet. Having heels on I almost slipped and held on to the sink. I’m from Amsterdam and I came down to London to see a friend. But never will I ever come...

Yes cozy, friendly, quick service and lively. Pros: nice king prawns. Good wine list. Cons: Black ink rice was not seafoody enough, 4 rings of squid and prawn (er, £13!) and a LOT of potato used in dishes like the vaguely ham croquettes. Chorizo sausages - basic quality, had a lot better, quite basic alioli used in/on just about everything. It's all a bit paired back on the quality/value verging on the cheeky (probably because the 'millenial' clientelle don't realise they are being ripped). Way better than a chain restaurant, tho' to put it in perspctive. I personally think the chef-ing quality could be better, lazily slapping alioli into everything is not great for variety of flavour (the whole remit of tapas!). Wine list and concept is good. Overall; an expensive, buzzy, friendly early evening experience, not sure I would return (unless they up the real garlic and spices), but I'm not a millenial who doesn't yet...