Please note that since writing this blog post, Pata Negra II has closed down
Ok, no more tapas. That’s it. Enough. Finito burrito. Or rather, finito tortilla (except that doesn’t rhyme and, besides, we didn’t finish it – we got it in an American-style doggy bag ‘to go’ and then proceeded to leave it on the table.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself. A while ago I promised you I’d visit Pata Negra II with Date Two. Well, last night we got round to our second date (we’re busy people, ok?). It’s opposite the Oosterpark, the terrace is three times the size of the inside and it was a warm(ish) evening. So pretty ideal really. We ordered a carafe of Sangria, of which I proceeded to drink the lion’s (or rather, the British) share, but I reckon it was watered down…
Date Two (who is desperate to be named on my site so, just to annoy him, I think I won’t) had only one wish: pollo alla salsa. ‘I want to order six, and I want to stick my face in it.’ [You have to imagine this in his American Gangster voice. He’s Bosnian-Dutch, but he sounds like The Godfather.]
So we ordered one of those (yes, just one – I was in charge of ordering here), the aforementioned tortilla, a wooden plate of Iberican cured sausages, some fried green peppers that were deceptively (and rather sporadically) hot, and a kind of prawn and spinach omelette that I would probably describe as a frittata. My one general criticism is that everything was too big. As my Spanish friend is always at pains to point out, tapas were designed to be eaten as snacks with drinks, not as a meal in themselves. Kind of like the Dutch borrelhapjes – and I can’t imagine a dinner plate’s worth of bitterballen is going to catch on as the next trend in dining, can you? So, given that Pata Negra does genuinely seem to be run by Spaniards, I was kind of surprised that the tortilla was meal-sized and not bite-sized. Still, everything tasted pretty good and, while I didn’t get that je-ne-sais-quois that would award Pata Negra the elusive five stars, it was definitely a good four.
The bill came to just over €60 but, since I was going out with The Godfather, I let him pay…
