Bodega! in Waterford

19/03/2025: Flawless tasting menu with the perfect pairing of wine. A must try! We ended the dinner feeling happy, satisfied and not overly full, which is always a risk with this type of food experience. We found the pace to be perfect. We never had a dull moment. There was a perfect cadence of: bring the wine, explain the wine, allow a few minutes to enjoy it, bring the new course, explain the course, taste the course, clean, bring the new glass & restart. Toward the end of the dinner we started noticing how they adapted seamlessly to the pace of every table so that it felt they always left exactly the same time in between stages while they clearly weren't. Very smooth. Luis has great storytelling and a very good sense of humor that brought lightheartedness to the dinner, something that we always like and made us feel super comfortable. In fact, while it's clear there a lot of work went into preparing the dinner and then in serving it, I would never call this a "fancy dinner". It just didn't feel so, which means bonus points for me. All the 7 wines served were very interesting and tasty. Some were even surprising (like the first, which was a sweet wine!). All the courses were an explosion of flavour, often presented in surprising ways and the base ingredients were clearly very good. If I have to call out one single area of improvement, I think the finale could be improved. I found the mini madeleine of the petit-fours underwhelming. I then lacked a strong taste to end, something like coffee as they don't have decaf (they said they are getting a new machine) or a spirit (I think they only have wine & dessert wine)

26/01/2025: This was a beautiful place to eat. I could not recommend it highly enough. Food was top class. Owner was very attentive and pleasant. We will definitely return.