Lizarran Restaurant Review

The Spanish tradition of serving small snacks with drinks in local public bars is found all over Spain, and these wonderful little snacks are called Tapas which literally means a cover or lid. It is believed that the old habit of placing a slice of bread or a piece of ham on top of your glass while sitting passing the time with old and new friends was to keep out any insects, and it is this edible 'lid' that was the precursor of the Tapas that we know and love today.

It was my husband's birthday last week and it is a family tradition that on birthdays we go to their favourite restaurant for the evening, my in-laws live in Spain and my husband absolutely adores and tries out all the wonderful little tapas bars whenever we're there.

So with this in mind I bravely booked a table at the newly arrived Spanish restaurant based in The Hub at Central Milton Keynes called Lizarran.

I always find it worrying when you book a restaurant for a special occasion which I haven't been to before and I haven't heard about, but this time I couldn't have chosen better. It is a beautifully appointed restaurant; clean, comfortable, spacious and relaxed, the staff were very welcoming, friendly and helpful, they have both indoor and outside dining facilities and the range of dishes on offer was staggering.

Some restaurants you go to have lovely websites with lots of exciting photographs and Lizarran is no exception. My experience of this is that half the time the pictures are far better than the actual food you are presented with, however that delicious looking selection pictured above is precisely what we encountered, that, and so much more.

You can visit their websites at http://www.lizarran.co.uk/ and http://www.lizarran-ca.com/.

We had a fabulous meal, the photograph above shows some of their selection of Pintxos which were gorgeous and very reasonably priced. The Pintxos are in a large glass case at the bar area of the restaurant and you go up and help yourself, hard to walk away from them actually because they're all such perfect little parcels of scrumptiousness.

Between the family we tried a lot of different dishes and some wonderful Spanish wine. From the Pintxos selection one of my favourites has to be the Patatas in Alioli Sauce (Potatoes in Garlic Mayonnaise Sauce) and even when you are too full to eat any more if there are any of these still on the plate you just have to force them down (and we did). Oh who am I kidding? I had so many 'favourites' I couldn't possibly list them, you will have to go and try them to find out just how good these were. And for my main course I tried the Pechuga, Chicken Breast served with Escalibada, baked red pepper, tomatoes, onion and aubergine, and an olive oil and garlic dressing - which I loved, it was succulent chicken and the depth of flavour added by the vegetables and spices makes you want to go back the next day and eat it all over again, in fact all of the dishes we tried were cooked to a really high standard and I could see from the expressions of the people around us that everyone there that evening was having the same experience that we were happily indulging in.

If I had one criticism, and it is only the tiniest one, it is that they need to spice up the Paella a little, but that's my preference as my Mother-in-law's Paella has a little more kick and cannot be beaten, yes I may be biased but that's allowed.

So if you're stumped for ideas of where to go for dinner in Milton Keynes or in the States and you haven't been there yet I would highly recommend that you book yourself a table at one of the gorgeous Lizarran restaurants and enjoy a Spanish experience you'll definitely want more of.