el rincon de rafa

i try to visit here once every couple of months being one of my favourite places to eat around the city, with the food being hearty and the atmosphere homely. great selection of beers and wine to accompany the food which is fresh and cooked to order, brought to your table when ready. i would definitely recommend the gambas pil-pil, filetitos and pulpitos en salsa.

food and service just excellent. a real authentic taste of spain. relaxed atmosphere and very friendly helpful staff. well worth a visit.👍👍👍

this is a great place, we were 26 people and yes we did book and pre order the food in advance but nevertheless that’s a lot of people to serve. the food was excellent and the service first class.

fantastic place hidden behind deansgate. football shirts and scarves displayed on the walls. but the real treat is the food. exquisite tapas and nice wines and coffee. probably the best tapas i have tasted in manchester.

ordered the octopus, king prawns with chilli, chorizo in red wine sauce, fried potatoes in tomato sauce, chick peas and the spanish omelette. fabulous. all very tasty and to wash it all down a marvellous jug of sangria. the reason i've not given this a 4 rating is that there were only four prawns in the dish and the chorizo was not fried.

we have visited el rincon a couple times and never been disappointed . the food is very authentic , good value and service excellent , i look forward to our next visit .

joy! i love tapas and this is as near as you can get to spain with getting on a plane. forget your chain tapas restaurants this is the real deal. hidden away from the crowds the atmosphere invites you to eat and drink and never let's you down.

el rincón de rafa has been coming off and going back on the list for years - we've heard such mixed reviews, one minute you'll hear someone saying it's the most amazing spanish food they've ever tasted then the next minute you hear tales of terrible microwaved tapas and hour-long waits for mediocre food. when my friend nat recently told me she had been and had a "sensational" meal, i started to consider adding it back onto the list - it is a manchester "classic" after all. well, fortunately we didn't need to wait long as nat liked it so much she decided to invite us all to go with her for her birthday meal!

the food at el rincon was brilliant, but the place needs to slow down. the staff were rushing around like a flustered benny hill sketch. great food doesn’t bring people back if the service ruins it.

not enough wine in the frigde.. went with friends for a meal food was average have had better tapas the sangeria was totally awful more orange juice than anthing else. it took three attempts to get a bottle of wine due to the wine not being available ended up with just a glass of wine the manager was very unhelpful and wasn't bothered about our complaint he was very rude and as no people skills. we will not be rushing back. last time we went it was very busy but this visit it wasn't could have something to do with the managers attitude.will go somewhere else for tapas next time.

go again? maybe with a group of friends who just wanted a lot of reasonably priced food, but i'll go elsewhere to get my culinary kicks.

such a shame. i first ate at el rinkon about 12/13 years ago, i loved it then, but not so much on return visits. . .

i've just read negative comments posted lately, and i tend to think that they've arisen from poor ordering, and a lack of understanding of the grub. in my (too long) experience of el rinkon, the food has deteriorated because of poor competitors nearby. a certain complacency has set in, in my view.

quite a shame, as this place always had the potential to be marvellous

terrible - frozen food and stressful service. i was expecting authentic spanish cuisine, what i got was truly flabbergasting. frozen surimi crab claw that had been pre-bought, ready made and frozen (do a google search on frozen surimi and look at images) which was tasteless and pure white imitation crab meat (no fresh crab to or fresh anything to be found at el rincon except the side salad of half a tomato and 2 slices of cucumber on one of the plates!). everything was covered with tinned tomatoes on every dish, and all dishes tasted the same except for the frozen meatballs, the meat was tasteless but i got a hit of chilli with the tinned tomatoes this time. the same with the squid it was chewy and clearly pre-frozen. very disappointingly (because this place could be so good, and has gone very downhill) the management have obviously decided to cut corners in an effort to turn over tables. service wise everything came within 5 minutes of ordering and as we had barely taken the last contents of a dish the plates were whisked away from us within a split of a second. the wait staff were constantly hovering making it a stressful evening (we were in and out within 40 minutes!)

rude and unhelpfull. we had booked the table 4 weeks prior to going and i checked by phone that the booking was ok!!! but when we got to the resturant there was no booking they said i must of booked it wrong it was my 60th birthday!!!!!! im hardly going to get the date wrong!!!! we were taking freind from london we will never go again

massively overrated. has to be the most overrated restaurant in manchester,great ambiance,but very average and expensive food and drink for what it is,tapas.not for us again.