Casa Ruiz, Bridgnorth
Rating: *** Andy Richardson finds tempting tapas at low prices but he knows Casa Ruiz can do better.
There's a small corner of Shropshire that is forever . . . Spanish. The apex of Bridgnorth High Street, where it meets Cartway, pays daily homage to the Med with fine flavours available at a bustling deli and authentic tapas bar.
Its appeal actually stretches beyond those who are fans of Catalan food, there's also a pretty good butcher and excellent chip shop located in that area.
Casa Ruiz is the tapas bar and is run by Alfonso Yufera-Ruiz and his partner Emma Lisk, who also run the excellent Casa Naranjo, just off Wyle Cop, in Shrewsbury.
Their operation in the county town is first class business, offering excellent tapas around the clock. The prices are absurdly low – certainly when compared with other tapas eateries, particularly in south Shropshire – and the quality exceptional.
A friend and I dined at Casa Naranjo earlier this spring and were blown away by the venue. It had the hustle and bustle of an authentic tapas bar from, say, San Sebastian. The choice was extensive, the atmosphere lively and the service first class. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly.
So it was with great anticipation that another friend and I arrived at Casa Ruiz for a mid-week lunch.
The two restaurants operate similar menus, as you'd expect, and the interior is also similarly styled. The first floor restaurant is a world away from the seething mass of shoppers on Bridgnorth High Street. Authentic Spanish music was pumping through the sound system when we arrived and there were already other guests looking forward to their lunches.
Cheekily – okay, fine, greedily – I'd spent the morning perusing the Casa Ruiz menu online, making a series of selections and looking forward to our lunch with much relish.
Sadly however – and, no doubt, it was an error on my part not to have correctly read the menu details – the selections available at lunchtime were not as extensive as those available during dinner service.
So my plans for a feast built around Jamon Iberico de Bellota (an Iberico acorn-cured ham) and pinchos del chef (grilled chicken, bacon and onion kebabs with an almond sauce) came to nought. At lunchtime, it was a slimmed down menu.
No matter. What we lost in variety we gained in value as the restaurant offered a two-tapas-for-a-fiver deal. The quality was just as good and we made our selections.
We opted for six platters between the two of us, imagining that they'd be fairly small and that we'd be comfortably full by the end of lunch. We hadn't accounted for the generosity of the kitchen and were presented with groaning plates of delicious food.
Queso manchego (dressed manchego cheese) fought it out with pan tumaca (fresh toasts with a delicious tomato, cumin and garlic puree). There were albondigas (pork and beef meatballs with a secret recipe tomato sauce) alongside bunuelos de bacalao (cod and spring onion fishcakes). Patatas bravas (crispy fried potato with a spicy red pepper sauce) and champinones al ajillo (garlic mushrooms with parsley and olive oil) completed the selection.
The food was delicious, of course. The albondigas were a delicious combination of savoury and piquant flavours, the pan tumaca was fresh and invigorating, the bunuelos de bacalao were thrilling crisp and tasty and we needed a fire extinguisher to put out the wonderfully fiery sauce on the patatas bravas. As lunch progressed, the dining room filled with more passers-by dropping in to take advantage of the absurdly low prices.
There was a great atmosphere in the venue and the hard-working waitress was attentiveness personified: she returned to our table repeatedly, offering more drinks, taking away finished plates and asking whether the food was to our liking.
There's much to admire about the operations run by Alfonso and Emma. They have proved themselves exceptional additions to Shropshire's dining scene, giving their customers a memorable and exciting taste of their homeland.
Their dining rooms are styled in earth-and-fire colours, with plenty of bold reds mixed with terracotas, and their down-home methods include rickety old tables that seem as though they were saved rom the last tapas bar in Spain.
The only downside was the lack of choice. The lunchtime menu offered formidable value; two dishes of tapas would be enough to satisfy most appetites and, at a fiver each, it really is the best value lunch in Shropshire.
No doubt the menu is limited at lunchtimes because the chef is working harder than any man ought to but, for that reason, Casa Ruiz scores a three. Save yourself for evening service: that really is something special.
ADDRESS
Casa Ruiz, 45 High Street, Bridgnorth, WV16 4DX
Phone: 01746 218 084
Web: www.casaruiz.co.uk
