Despite living in Cork now for nearly 5 years last night was only the first time I’d been to the Boqueria tapas bar. We decided to do a midweek outing to the cinema and wanted to get something to eat before going there. With time of the essence, we didn’t want anything too formal and time consuming but weren’t in the humour for fast food either so tapas seemed perfect.

I liked the atmosphere of the Boqueria. When we arrived there were already a fair few couples, singles and groups eating and drinking. The tables are quite close to each other and I’d prefer if there was a bit more space but as the bar wasn’t overly full it wasn’t too big a problem. Its quite brightly lit too.

As we were under time pressure we decided not to do the usual tapas thing of ordering a course at a time. The menu offered a good selection of hot and cold dishes, aswell as a daily special of a venison dish.

 I ordered some marinated olives and the charcuterie. Conor went with calamari and aioli and an order of chicken liver pate. We both had a mini carafe of Rioja.

The mixed marinated olives were delicious, a few different sizes, tastes and shapes. The charcuterie was fab: Gubbeen salami, liver pate which was gorgeous, apple chutney, chorizo, manchego cheese, quince jelly, serrano ham accompanied by plenty of arbutus sourdough and brown bread. The Herencia Remondo Rioja went very well with the food. I liked the fact that there was plenty of choice of both white and red wine by the glass.

Conor’s calamari was plentiful and he seemed to enjoy it too, though felt the aioli could have been a bit more garlicky. I’m not a huge fan of squid so I left him to it. He also enjoyed his chicken liver pate which was accompanied with toasted arbutus sourdough and apple chutney. The chutney was very good.

Overall, the service was very pleasant and efficient and we left happy and in plenty of time for our stroll up the river to the cinema. The bill totalled around €58 which included food, drink and double espresso. I thought this was reasonable.

I look forward to returning and sampling more of their menu at a more leisurely pace in the near future.