Friday Evening Tapas at Brace & Browns

Sarah had organised a little meet up, seeing as it had been so long, and Brace and Browns on Whiteladies was chosen. Brace and Browns offers up a large range of tapas dishes most of which have their origins in British cooking but fused with other countries, such as Italy, Japan and France. Our group of 9 were sat in the upstairs part of the bar and given menus to paw over. 

Each tapas is £4.75 which for most of the dishes is pretty good value, however when you consider that some of these items are salad or chips it becomes less good value. Having said that Rich and I chose 6 tapas to share between us we picked; mozzarella and tomato salad, the mini burger, truffle chips, mini fish and chips, pork three ways and a mixed mushroom dish with parmesan and polenta.

the first board to arrive

our board, a work of food art

This was definitely the most beautifully presented tapas I have ever seen, each board that arrived at our table was a picture. Rich and I were starving so we eagerly tucked in. The burger was the first to be tackled, and it was juicy and flavoursome with a sort of horseradish crossed with thousand island dressing on the top. Sadly this is was the best tapas on our board of the night. The ideas were there but most of the dishes suffered from either over cooking or under seasoning. The black pudding for example, that came as part of the pork done three ways was so hard it took a lot of effort to cut through and the pork medallion lacked salt.

pork cooked three ways

We also found some of the food a little cold, which could have been down to the fact that the presentation had taken so long. It was slightly disappointing that the taste did not live up to the presentation because it did look so good. I think these are problems that Brace and Browns can overcome because some of the dishes were promising and would be even better with some tweaking. Other than the burger my favourite taste was the bright forest green apple puree that came with the pork, best apple sauce I've ever had, so full of flavour I would love to be able to replicate it.

The tapas here has potential so would definitely return after a few months to see what is new. After Brace and Browns we checked out the replacement for The Colour Inn. Charlie's Bar is thankfully mostly unchanged, I was a big fan of The Colour Inn, so was pleased to know I could still go there for the same quality of cocktails. Thoroughly recommend the gingerbread martini it's heaven in a glass.

an old fashioned

To find out more about Brace and Browns visit their Tumblr for a menu and for updates on the latest cocktail mixes and music nights at Charlie's Bar visit their Facebook page. Next blogs will be on curry at the Clove, from Rich and our trip to Boca Bistro.