Blogger Event at Iberica, St Vincent Street

I was recently invited along to a blogger event at Iberica, the new tapas joint on the corner of St Vincent Street and Hope Street. As I’m a fan of tapas I couldn’t say no! I arrived and was greeted by very friendly staff and handed a glass of bubbles… so far so good. I joined the other bloggers, there was just a small group of us, and we immediately started to discuss how pretty the place was. After we had the chance to mingle for a while the chef, Cesar Garcia, came out and spoke to us for a while. He brought us on a little tour of the place (yes the restaurant is big enough for us to be brought on a tour), we went down to the deli, the shop and of course the bar. At the deli you can get loads of different cheeses and meats and you can also get a takeaway roll ... yes you read that right .. mind you it's not your typical roll, I didn't get to taste it but it did look delicious. We were then led into the private dining area - I must admit I was beginning to feel very important at this stage.

At each place setting there was a menu with 16 dishes on it - I was having a look through it trying to figure out what dishes I was going to order, only to find out that I was going to get to sample all of the dishes. Well this was really turning out to be some treat. And the treats continued ... we were getting to sample a number of different wines and got a little background on each wine.

So the dishes of the night were:-

Green Asparagus toast with manchego, onion confit & Truffle Oil

Sweet aubergine, confit-style with honey & pinenuts

Pumpkin salad, warm salad of roasted pumpkin, goat's cheese & lemon
thyme with an orange dressing

Ham croquetas, signature dish made with serrano ham

Fried chorizo lollipops, an Iberica classic, served with pear alioli

Beef cheek carpaccio, cooked and finely sliced with truffle potato puree,
sweet potato crips & tartare sauce

Mini burgers, sliders of secreto pork loin served with pickled Piparra peppers

Fresh mackerel with roast potato in a clam and garlic sauce sered with parsley
 and seaweed emulsion 

Octopus a la gallega, Galician style octopus with potatoes and
Pimenton de la Vera

Vension meatballs with apple puree

Oxtail sandwich with tartare sauce and potato cream

Pluma, iberico pork loin (from the charcoal Josper oven)

Botillo, a speciality from el Bierzo, chopped and marinated cuts of pork,
lightlysmoked before cooking - their version of haggis

Caramelised Spanish rice pudding
Gloria cheesecake
Churros con chocolate 

Ok so at this point I have to come clean, I didn't have either of the fish dishes on the menu. If you follow my blog you will know that fish is something that I struggle with but I do make myself try it. However, on this particular occasion I was a little under the weather (ok so I was hungover) and I decided not to have the fish dishes. But from talking to my companions on either side of me it would appear that the fish dishes were lovely.

My favourite dishes:

To be honest, I liked all the dishes that I tasted. However, the ones that I will definitely have to order the next time I visit are:- croquetas, chorizo lollipops, sliders, asparagus and the rice pudding. I would never order rice pudding as a desert, I would never even make it at home and the only reason I tasted it was because I was at a blogger event and felt obliged to taste it, however, I'm so glad that I tried it because it was delicious. 

My least favourite dish:

Again as I said I did like all the dishes that I tasted but there are two dishes that I probably wouldn't order again and they are the pluma and the cheesecake. I'm funny about cheesecakes and I make a mighty fine cheesecake myself so I think that's why I'm extra fussy.

Contact Details:

140 St Vincent Street,
Glasgow,
G2 5LA

Telephone:- 0141 5307985
Website:- click HERE

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Thanks a mil for reading.

Emma mai

Picture courtesy of Iberica