This little tapas bar is one of a small group of four related restaurants, with a fifth to open shortly at the time of writing. This branch La Azotea opened five years ago and is located in the heart of the old town, just yards from the Seville cathedral. There is a small, narrow dining room and a few outside tables, and from these you can look up at the cathedral at the end of the street. You are recommended to order two or three dishes per person, and we found that two dishes each was plenty, the portions being larger than tapas places in London.
The wine list started at just €15 and there were plenty of choices around the €20 mark, which makes a change from central London. There were no vintages listed, but example wines were Ramon do Casar Albariño at €20 compared to its retail price of €11, and Senorio de San Vicente at €50 for a bottle that will set you back about €45 in a shop, depending on the vintage.
A salad of tomatoes had olives, anchovy, boiled egg and micro eaves, the dressing nicely balanced and the tomatoes actually tasting of tomatoes, something that can rarely be said in the UK these days (13/20). Crab and avocado roll looked nice, with a sweet brioche-like bread with its filling of crab, avocado, red cabbage and a hint of chilli, but there was not much crab, the avocado was barely present and slightly discoloured, the shellfish itself barely registering in flavour (11/20). A warm salad of chickpeas was better, coming with hazelnuts, avocado, pieces of bacon and strawberries, an odd sounding mix that actually worked fine; the chickpeas themselves were tender (12/20). A tagliatelle Bolognese had decent meat but slightly overcooked pasta, and needed more seasoning (11/20).
Service was friendly though the pace of dishes was extremely leisurely at this lunch, so this is probably not a place to go if you are in a hurry. The bill, with just water to drink, was €45 for two, so £20 a head for plenty of food, with coffee but no dessert. If you shared a modest bottle of wine then a typical cost per head might be £35, so this is a pretty cheap outing. The dishes we had were rather inconsistent, but this was a harmless enough meal.
Reiner Hähnle
Hi Andy, I had lunch with my wife in the Santa Cruz branch last year two times. We noticed that the quality of the dishes varied between both visits. Also, they seemed to have some signature dishes in which they excelled. I distinctly remember a fantastic seafood carpaccio. Given that the place was 200m from the Cathedral, where you normally would expect a tourist trap, I thought it was pretty decent.