Restaurant review: Mediterranean magic at Aberdeen’s Spanish tapas restaurant Cafe Andaluz

By David Dalziel

May 7 2022, 6:00 am

A selection of the dishes.

Cafe Andaluz has clearly been doing something right since its arrival on the Aberdeen dining scene, as when Covid restrictions eased and restaurants began to reopen, I could not get a table for love nor money on several occasions.

On a recent catch-up with an old university friend, my luck changed when we chanced an unbooked visit and managed to bag a table for two at about 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon.

Even at this in-between time, the restaurant was fairly full and we were grateful they could accommodate us, and our rumbling tummies.

Cafe Andaluz

I had dined at Cafe Andaluz previously and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, so I was keen to return.

Tapas is one of my favourite meals due to the fact I am rather indecisive and love variety, so being able to sample a range of dishes is ideal.

The restaurant gives you a real feeling of being abroad with its terracotta flooring and blue and white wall tiles, not to mention the Spanish music in the background and little trees adorned with fairy lights lining the aisles.

The fact that the friendly and efficient waiting staff who served us were all Spanish added to the authentic experience.

I studied the drinks menu with excitement after spotting a good range of cocktails and wines on offer, but we settled for a pint of the restaurant’s own lager which was crisp and went down a treat.

The food

We had two food menus to choose from – an a la carte option and a pre-theatre deal which offered any three tapas for £15.95, which I thought was good value.

As I said earlier, I can be a bit indecisive at times and these menus posed a real test as everything sounded so good and it was really difficult to narrow down my choices.

I certainly couldn’t settle for three dishes, so we went for four each and hoped that wasn’t going to be too much.

My choices were the ever-reliable patatas bravas, along with the delicious-sounding gambas pil pil, chorizo y butifarra negra and paella tapa.

I don’t know why but I simply cannot visit a tapas restaurant without ordering patatas bravas (fried cubed potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce topped with alioli), and this version didn’t let me down. The potatoes were perfectly cooked and the alioli did a good job of cooling down the nicely spiced sauce.

The gambas pil pil (king prawns marinated in garlic, chilli, parsley and smoked paprika) came with a £2 supplement but were worth the extra money. The prawns were large, with a nice texture, and the sauce they came in was so delicious I scooped up every last drop with my spoon so as not to waste any.

Chorizo is a current favourite in my family and for good reason, so I couldn’t resist the chorizo y butifarra negra (sauteed chorizo sausage and black pudding in a spicy tomato sauce). Black pudding is also something I find hard to ignore so a combination of the two sounded fantastic.

I really enjoyed this dish, and again the rich, flavoursome sauce was so good that I could have happily eaten it as a soup in its own right.

My fourth dish, the paella tapa (a combination of slow-cooked calasparra rice with chicken, pork, morcilla and chickpeas) was a touch on the dry side and I wasn’t a fan of the texture of the pork, but I did enjoy the flavours.

My only minor complaint was that every dish was served absolutely piping hot and did not cool down due to the heat being retained by the terracotta dishes, so it was burned mouths all round as we were too impatient to wait.

But in terms of the quality of the food, I can only praise it as the flavours were immense.

My friend was equally enthused with his choices: patatas gratinadas (layers of sliced potato with garlic cream and mozzarella cheese); queso de cabra al horno (grilled round of goat’s cheese topped with homemade orange and chilli marmalade); albondigas (traditional spiced pork and beef meatballs, served in a rich tomato sauce); and pollo marinado (pan-fried sliced chicken breast marinated in smoked paprika, lemon and coriander served with chilli yoghurt).

He said the potato dish was perfectly balanced, while the goat’s cheese wasn’t overpowering as can sometimes be the case, and the accompanying chilli marmalade added a bit of zest to proceedings.

Every dish was polished off in record time, as was mine.

We were too full for dessert, so I would say four dishes is ideal for people who have a more savoury palate, but if you would like to leave room for a dessert then three tapas would be a safer option.

A special mention must go to our helpful waitress who made sure we were only charged the pre-theatre rate for three of our dishes with the fourth charged at the a la carte price, which saved us money on our meal and was appreciated.

The verdict

I absolutely loved my visit to Cafe Andaluz and really didn’t want to leave when it came to settling the bill, which I thought was reasonable for the amount of food we had.

Even at 6.30pm the restaurant was packed full and had a buzzing atmosphere with couples, families and groups of friends all enjoying a night out.

With so many people having missed their foreign holidays over the past couple of years, Cafe Andaluz offers a little slice of the Mediterranean right here in the Granite City. And some top-quality food and service to boot.

I’ll happily raise a sangria to that.

David Dalziel if the features editor at the Press and Journal and Evening Express. He is also the editor of Your Life magazine, the weekend supplement in the Press and Journal on Saturdays. Has been reviewing restaurants for several years.