Paella Thursday at La Tasca

One of my favourite things to do on holiday in Palma (Majorca) is to sit outside in the sunshine eating tapas or other yummy Spanish cuisine. Even though this isn't exactly possible in Manchester, we still have a few tapas restaurants to enjoy. That's why I looked online and found that La Tasca have a special offer available on Thursdays where you get a big pan of paella and a jug of sangria for £20 (for two people); naturally I wanted to see whether the price really made it a good offer or not.

Making reservations - some problems to rectify?

The La Tasca website is easy enough to navigate, although the web form was having a few issues when I tried to book a table at the Manchester Deansgate restaurant. It kept resetting itself to a table for one, even though the deal I selected was specifically for two people. In the end I booked it and added some notes to the reservation that it was actually for two, not one!

Thursday at La Tasca

It turns out that I didn't even need to fuss about the reservation, as there were some free tables when we arrived. It was pretty busy as they were doing a Christmas meal taster on the same evening, but there were tables all the same. We were seated on a table against the wall - luckily we had a table for four which is pretty vital when you're filling up your table with food.

The waitress came and took our order promptly, only for another waitress to come along minutes later and ask us again. Ten minutes later our sangria arrived - they had kindly given us the cava sangria as we had asked (try it, it is amazing), and we were warned that there was going to be a 30 minute wait for the paella to come out.

Thirty minutes passed relatively quickly as we made our way through the jug of sangria, but the waitress came by our table again and said it would be another 10 minutes. About 20 minutes later, the paella pan finally came out of the kitchen - and man did it smell good! Needless to say we wolfed it down much faster than it took to come out of the kitchen...

As we ordered no puddings, we paid a flat £20 for our bill and left a 10 per cent tip. The service was good, but there should have been a more realistic time given to the main meal (especially as we had booked a table which specifically showed what we would be ordering that evening!)

However, I wouldn't hesitate to return to La Tasca, as it seems to deliver anywhere you are based in the UK.

Final score? 6.5/10