Lola Cocina
19 Falcon St.
Crows Nest, Sydney
Tapas has got to be one of the greatest food ideas ever! The whole concept just seems so right. Having multiple portions of tasty food to leisurely graze on, while sipping a sangria or Spanish wine is one of life’s pleasures. Lola Cocina certainly hits the mark with their tapas offerings, but they also have larger plates if that’s what you are looking for. For a small place by appearance, it is surprisingly big with seating across two levels. We were upstairs and had a window table taking in the receding sun and the bustle outside all from the calm inside.
While we don’t always have sangria when eating tapas, it’s fair to say we do most of the time. They offer red or white sangria here - but we always have red wherever we are. It just seems appropriate. This litre jug had plenty of fruit in it and nice flavours. There was any left at the end of our meal either.
As soon as we spotted boquerones on the menu they were chosen. This simple and oh so tasty snack was a serving of four chunky slices of baguette topped with white anchovies, Luquillo pepper slivers and a drizzle of olive oil. It’s such a delicious burst of flavour!
We love chorizo when having tapas but decided to order the pan con txistorra instead, even though both were available. This dish was slices of pan fried txistorra sausage and piquillo peppers cooked with pedro ximenez again on crusty, chunky, baguette slices. Txistorra is a long thin spicy pork based sausage, like chorizo, from Northern Spain.
On to a staple next, croquettes. There are actually several varieties available here. We went for the croquetas de Manchego - croquettes made with aged Manchego cheese in a serving of four with garlic aioli for dipping. They were hot, golden, crispy outside, soft inside and very tasty.
If you like pastry, and we do, then empanadas are another must! In fact these were empanadillas, small crispy golden pastry parcels filled with chorizo and beef (yes we did have to have something with chorizo!) and served with a tangy salsa picante. These were great. The pastry was divine
Spanish meatballs are hugely popular there for a reason - they’re so good. The albondigas con romesco was a serving of six tender tasty meatballs piled high on top of a tangy spicy romesco sauce. The meatballs themselves also had a hidden surprise with delicious molten Manchego cheese inside them.
As mentioned before, this place looks quite small from the street. It’s a narrow building but it’s two leaves create plenty of space. There’s the downstairs action, the upstairs space for larger groups and also an upstairs area near the windows again for smaller numbers. The pictures and artefacts create a great Spanish atmosphere too!
Lola Cocina have a very well earned reputation for good food, good drinks, nice atmosphere and good service. They do it all well here and create a lovely Spanish experience for their guests. If you’re after a taste of Spain then it’s somewhere that should certainly be high on your list!