Lunya: Authenic Spanish Tapas At Liverpool One

This is an archived post, moved over from my old Blogger account- hence the lack of photos! If you’d like to see it in it’s full glory, you can still access it at www.GoodEggFoodie.blogspot.com.

Ok, so let’s start by acknowledging the elephant in the room. I know what you’re thinking: a restaurant review, with no pictures of the food. How can that be? Well let me tell you, I am uneasy with whipping my iphone out in a crowded restaurant where the staff are no more than 1m away from you. Maybe I will get over it in time, maybe not. So for now you will just have to trust me when I say the food looks great. You can always check out their website if you don’t believe me.

 

So back to the review…

Lunya, on College Lane in the centre of Liverpool is a marvellous place. A great deli (mainly Spanish but with a bit of regional food thrown in for good measure) with hams hanging from the wooden rafters, fresh breads and a great Spanish cheese counter, leads into a small restaurant. There is additional seating outside and upstairs, but the best seats are on the ground floor where you can watch the deli traffic come and go.

This was by no means our first trip to Lunya. In fact it is probably the one place we have visited repeatedly in the past twelve months. I have very little brand loyalty, so this in itself speaks volumes.

However, today was the first time we had been and there was an offer on. Four tapas for £15 – but each diner had to order four. Normally the two of us have bread and five or six plates between us, so today we reluctantly said no to the bread (although the tomato and sourdough are both excellent) and launched ourselves into ordering eight dishes.

All I can say is thank god we didn’t have much breakfast!

The first dish out was one we hadn’t had before and was my least favourite. I love tuna so we decided to try the Mojama – air dried and cured tuna. Curious stuff. It looked like an air dried ham but did have a tuna after taste. Not really my thing although my husband happily cleared the plate.

My favourite dish came next: Iberico ribs Catalan style. The most tender little ribs in an orange and BBQ sauce. I could happily eat a whole rack of these juicy ribs and the sauce came in useful for dipping the crispy belly pork in.

Cornish squid rings came in Cains Raisin Beer batter and there was no hint of chewiness in the squid and the batter was almost tempura style in it’s lightness. Also from the fishy end of the menu king prawns pil pil were cooked in olive oil and garlic. Tasty, but could have taken more garlic.

Because we just hadn’t had enough pork(!) we also had the spicy chorizo in wine with fennel. Looking back at the menu I was surprised to see it was white wine, as I always assume chorizo to be cooked in red, but the spicy bite of the sausage worked really well alongside the fennel seeds and this is one I will be recreating at home very soon.

In a bid to get in at least one of our five a day we ordered the patatas a lo pobre and garlic mushrooms. The patatas, sautéed with onion and red pepper was cut a little on the thick side, but mixed with the garlic mushrooms gave a welcome respite from the meat and seafood!

Dishes start around £5, so this really is a great offer. There are of course set times and some dishes aren’t available, but almost everything from the extensive menu is available and there is enough to please all tastes.

If you don’t fancy tapas, there are sharing platters and paella, as well as sarnies and soup at lunchtime. And if a group of you are planning a visit, they can do you a whole suckling pig at the weekend with a bit of notice!

I also have to mention the staff –a mix of Spanish and Scouse. All are really friendly and helpful without being in your face.

Lunya is a breath of fresh air in an area full of chain restaurants and long may their success continue.

Right, I’m off for a lie down after all that food….

 

Details

Lunya. 18-20 College Lane, Liverpool. L1 3DS

0151 706 9770

www.lunya.co.uk

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