Arbequina
72-74 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JB
About
A small, loud, genuinely excellent tapas bar on Cowley Road with a long zinc counter and a short menu of Spanish-leaning sharing plates. The tortilla has been called perfect by The Guardian and the menu short-but-sublime by The New York Times, which is a lot of ink for a neighbourhood bar, and locals still treat it as theirs. It runs limited hours (currently Thursday and Friday evenings, all day Saturday, closed Sunday to Wednesday) and the room is small, so book. This is the flagship of the east Oxford food stretch, the part of the city most visitors never reach.
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