Balandro Restaurante - Cádiz

The Balandro Restaurante is a Spanish restaurant in Cádiz on the West coast of Spain. The restaurant specialises in producing some of the finest Mediterranean dishes as well as dishes from the Spanish region of Andalusia, particularly those that use fish or seafood.

The Restaurant

Restaurant El Balandro

The Balandro Restaurante is run and owned by the Vélez brothers who burst onto the hospitality scene in the 1990s with this restaurant. At first Balandro was a restaurant purely based on traditional Spanish food but it has evolved since then to incorporate a broader spectrum of Mediterranean food.

Balandro in Cádiz was the first restaurant to be opened by the Vélez brothers and helped them to gain enough success and funding to continue to grow in the restaurant industry. Now they also own the Restaurante Albarizuela in the nearby town of Puerto Real. In both of these restaurants, the brothers have aimed to add their own personal stamp on traditional Spanish food in order to bring it up to date with contemporary cooking trends.

The staff members who work at the Balandro Restaurante have all been extremely well trained and picked for their dedication to quality. Alongside the state of the art machines used in the kitchen, it means that the Balandro Restaurante provides the very best service it can. This dedication to perfection has also helped put this Spanish restaurant on the map and in the Cádiz city guide books.

The Balandro Restaurante composes of a bar and three dining rooms. The bar is designed with a nautical theme in mind and is shaped a little bit like the bow of a ship. This is particularly fitting as the bar is the very first thing you will probably visit in the Balandro Restaurante. The bar, like the whole restaurant, is contemporarily styled, mostly using white, blacks and browns to give a modern and chic feel.

The three dining rooms are also decorated in a modern and fashionable way. The main dining room can be found on the first floor of the building and, thanks to its long wall of large windows, has excellent views out to the sea. An interesting feature of this room is the intricately carved wooden screen that separate the diners of this room from the bar. The first floor also has one of the small private dining rooms which is decorated more romantically and is typically used for smaller celebrations such as birthdays and family reunions. Finally, the last and largest dining room can be found on the ground floor and is decorated in a modern fashion but with an emphasis on golden colours. This room can seat around 150 people and is often used for weddings. So if you ever visit Spain for a wedding, you could be going to the reception at the Balandro in Cádiz.

The Menu

The Menu

At the bar in the Balandro Restaurante, you can enjoy an endless amount of Spanish tapas and raciones as well as some other larger snacks and meals. The repertoire at the restaurant is so large that they change the tapas menu every week so as to keep the menu interesting and make full use of the kitchen team's talent. Some of the best tapas include 'Garbanzos con bacalao' (Chickpeas with cod), and 'Albondiguillas de ternera' (Veal meatballs).

The main menu is an 'à la carte' style menu and includes such dishes as 'Solomillo de Ternera a la mostaza antigua' (Veal Sirloin steak in rustic mustard), 'Salmón a la crema de ahumados' (Smoked salmon fillet in a cream sauce), and 'Tortellini de verduras a la gorgonzola' (Vegetable Tortellini with gorgonzola cheese).

The wine collection at the Balandro Restaurante is also great, as it should be at any Spanish restaurant in Spain, and includes wines from various denominations from across the world. Many of the bottles have been cured for long periods of time, and they even have some which have been cured in the wine barrel for over 30 months.