WAITING has never been one of my strong points.

So I made sure I ordered my food an hour in advance, reading out the name of each dish in my best Spanish accent along with its order number.

I was recommended three tapas per person so I ordered six, including goat’s cheese salad, stuffed peppers, butternut squash topped with homemade sour cream, chicken with roasted nuts and chorizo.

It came to around £25.

Expecting to pull up and be on my way again in five minutes, I was disappointed to find when I arrived that my order was wrong.

My GCSE Spanish alerted me to the fact that "gambas" had found their way onto my receipt - I had memorized the word after a dodgy measle-like reaction to prawns at school.

Cordero - lamb- had also been substituted for one of my earlier dishes.

The staff were extremely apologetic and offered me a glass of wine while I waited for my order to be changed.

Fifteen minutes later I walked out with three extra dishes for the price of my six, but being in a hurry, I didn’t hang around to check what mysteries I had been served.

I eventually got home to find each platter individually packaged in a see-through container which had then been tightly wrapped up in cling film.

It was quite fiddly to unwrap each one, especially when hungry, and a couple of them had leaked, making my hands greasy even before I had started eating.

The food, I think, would have been tasty if I had got it earlier, but instead it was really oily.

Oh, and they’d missed off my chorizo, leaving me instead with a dish of consolatory patatas bravas to contend with.


How Taperia rated:
FOOD *** Oily
SERVICE ** Getting the order right is a must
INTERIOR/DECOR **** Modern

Address: Taperia, 1 Deal Gateway, Deptford