Pata Negra

Today we had a lovely lunch at Pata Negra. 26 Stirling Highway Nedlands, Western Australia. It is a Spanish Tapas restaurant, and for what they do, they are good at it.
I wouldn't say that it was fabulous enough to warrant a repeat visit, but we are glad we went.When they update their online menu, I will put the correct names of dishes on the pics (my Spanish is crap)

The restaurant innards - dark and very 60/70's feel with loads of vinyl and brown glass.

For our drinks we selected the Rosito d'ivori beer. Nice and light and wheaty.

Here we have walnut 3yr old dried ham (Jamon). The pig is only ever fed walnuts. The flesh was surprisingly tender and very walnuty. In the background we had bread with a dried broadbean puree with cucumber, radish and spring onions. The flavour was just divine.

My favourite dish, though at $8 a pop I thought it was pretty steep. Seared scallop with ?capsicum jam on a bed of pureed white beans.

I wasn't sure what to make of this. It was smoked octopus, and I love octopus, but it tasted like salami to me.

Oxtail empanadilla with a sweet tomato puree. The puree made this dish. Without it, it would have been so so.

Seared Tiger Prawns with chimichurro.Was a balanced dish.

This si the dish we were both looking forward to. What a huge disappointment! Billed as pata Negra fabada - confit of duck with white beans, cured ham and chorizo we were expecting a flavour punch. Ba-bow. What we got were pieces of dried out and flavourless duck in a flavourless dish. We *think* the issue might have been that this dish needs a while to cook, and we got it for lunch, when it probably would have been able to develop its flavours (and the meat might have come away from the bone) by the dinner time covers.

YUM. Spanish donut, with  Pedro Ximénez and raisin icecream. Donuts were light and fluffy and tasty. The rest was just too heavy after the meal we had.

Now this was a total winner! Chocolate tart with mandarin icecream and dates. Perfectly balanced, nice and light (despite being choclate pastry) and the flavours worked really well off each other.