Arbequina Tapas Restaurant and Bar Reviewed
72-74 Cowley RdOxford, OX4 1JB
Lucas Zurdo Symons
Above the doors to 74 Cowley Road, printed in a small and unassuming orange typeface is the word Arbequina. It’s easily missed; the dark glass interior is set under the building’s original Victorian gilt shop signs uncovered during the restaurant’s renovation in 2016. Arbequina is named after a Catalonian olive variety, and its menu is rooted in the gastronomy of a nation. Authentic Spanish ingredients, mostly olive oils and paprikas, line nearly half the wall behind the bar. Anyone entering would be justified in expecting an authentic Spanish experience, but Arbequina is not that place, and nor does it want to be.
An evening in the Basque city of Vitoria, my family’s home, finds me hopping bar to bar through the streets of the old city centre, never at one place for more than half an hour and rarely seated. Drinks come quickly and are accompanied by a tapa – olives maybe – served directly from the counter. You eat, you drink and you move. Tapa, after all, comes from the verb tapar, ‘to cover’; originally, the small plate of food would be served covering the glass of the drink. As I lean over Arbequina’s bar on a Sunday evening in Oxford term time and am served a single slice of tortilla Española cut fresh from a full plate in front of me, I feel a shimmer of familiarity.
But Arbequina is not trying to be Vitoria, despite my own nostalgia. Centrepiece Spanish dishes of tortilla, chorizo and croquetas sit alongside pumpkin salads, or aubergine and whipped feta, on a menu where many of the dishes are simple enough to have every ingredient listed in their name. Three flat-top grills a metre from me fry whole sea-breams, which are then plated and served straight from the countertop.
My tortilla is little more than eggs, potatoes and onions, all fried in the oil sat in front of me in five litre tins – they are displayed alongside the spices and pulses which make up much of the menu. While Spanish bars are filled with foods ready for serving, at Arbequina speed and ease are not priorities. I’m going nowhere else, after all. Rather, the restaurant’s menu performs its own simplicity, and its dishes demand to be seen for what they are, down to the individual ingredient.
Arbequina is about more than serving Spanish dishes. Just as the building’s façade exposes its own history, the restaurant inside lays bare its food’s route from kitchen-shelf to table.