CityLife

Restaurant review: La Viña

LA VIéA in the evening was busy verging on packed with the handheld credit card machine swirling around the tables like a flamenco dancer.

There was the buzz of chatter, hypnotic Latin beats and Rioja on the wine list. For a while we had the illusion we were in a Spanish taverna in a tiny pueblo during fiesta.

Well, for about seven and three quarter minutes. Then it dawned upon us that the music was The Gypsy Kings, probably with their Shopping Mall compilation album from '95.

Worse still, the guy on the next table was a well-to-do Cheshire set dandy, hair spiked every which way, talking about a recent stag night in Blackpool and `getting totally bladdered'.

The illusion evaporated as rapidamente as agua on the roof of a coche in the dog days of agosto.

If only the food had managed to lift the mood.

Tapas

La Viéa is tapas almost all the way and it's so mind-numbingly predictable that I only have my notes to thank for remembering any of it.

From patatas bravas (é2.75) and tortilla espanola (é2.95) via the chorizo a la sidra (spicy sausage and cider, é3.75) and albondigas (meatballs - é3.85) to gambas al ajillo (prawns and garlic, é4.85) and ensalada verde (green salad, é2.95), it was so-so bordering on no-no.

The only item which stood out was a very good Judias con chorizo (beans, spicy sausage and garlic oil, é3.45). The overall blandness was turned into a fat negative by a kitchen problem which left the tortilla scorched and a dish of lamb chops (é4.95) reduced to just one remove from ash.

We also tried the "ideal for sharing'' Raciones - or large tapas as La Viéa whimsically translates it. The carne choice cost é13.55 and was only big enough for sharing between one!

Not that dreary tapas is news in the food and drink scene, having become the soft catering option for both national chains and smaller concerns.

La Tasca

No, La Viéa gets it wrong in the billing. The restaurant is part of the La Tasca Group which opened its first outlet in Manchester in 1993 and now has 53 of the eponymous restaurants and four La Viéas.

The latter are supposed to be an upmarket version of the original concept, and this is the problem.

While hunched gloomily over my gambas, I tried to work out the points of the difference between La Viéa and its less lofty cousin, La Tasca, a mere 100 metres down the road. There were seven I reckoned.

La Viéa has a smaller site, and a first floor upstairs, while the other has a basement. The new place has more windows and less tiles, and La Viéa burns things more frequently.

In other words, there's so little variance it's hard to understand why they didn't just open another La Tasca. Then you look at the menus. Eagle-eyed readers may have worked out that I'm only six points of difference in.

The seventh is the clever one. By allowing those in the know to think this is a posher La Tasca, and by not advertising the link with those who aren't, the group can increase prices by 50p here, é1 there. This shows they've got cojones if nothing else. Thus, Serrano ham is é3.65 in La Tasca and é4.45 in La Viéa.

Merino

Perhaps the company are pulling the Merino fleece over our eyes once too often with this new venture. At La Tasca it's sort of fun and you go along with the kidology, but here you can almost smell the marketing meetings and corporate machinations.

Without needing to ask, you just know that La Viéa was created as a UK concept hoping to exploit our Iberian love affair, but much more seriously this time as though this is the real deal.

But you go because it's easy and familiar. It's for when you're with the kids and you need a mass-appeal meal that seems wholesome.

Or when you're out in town and you need something to get you through to the next more memorable experience. Nowt wrong with that, of course, as long as the people who bring us these things don't try too hard to convince us this is genuinely Spanish.

In Manchester, the closest we get to that remains El Rincon. Owned by a Spaniard and lost on Longworth Street off Deansgate, this basement restaurant knocks La Viéa into a cocked sombrero.

El Rincon serves callos, or tripe by another foreign name, La Viéa's bosses wouldn't dream of it. Nuff said - or ébasta! as our friends over there might exclaim.

La Viéa, 285 Deansgate, Manchester (0161 835 3144).