Pan Tomaca in Tower Hamlets

A stone’s throw from a rather dark and gloomy branch of Iberica La Terrassa is the name for its catering en plein air in a corner of Cabot Square itself. Cooking is done on a Josper grill on site thus the menu focuses upon grilled meats fish and vegetables and is much pared down from the main menu in the restaurant. This meant with hake from the main menu as well as monkfish tails from the specials menu removed, the fish on offer was limited to squid, prawns, langoustines or octopus. After a trio of chorizos with some crusty bread and olive oil comprising four pieces thus at £4.75 each over £1 a piece, we chose a whole baby chicken, pork ribs and a flat iron steak which turned out to be a small vertical pillar of meat. Everything was exquisitely cooked but with only an aubergine accompaniment, left all three of us feeling a tad peckish and despite only one pint of beer a bill of £77 including service.

As a person who invited my friends to this restaurant (because I love your paella) a few weeks ago, I was absolutely shocked at how you treated her in review here after she commented that she ordered a spinach with chickpeas that were oversalted, returned the WHOLE dish, said to waitress why they couldn’t eat it, and it still was included in the bill. And now you are accusing your customers of eating the food and complaining it was included in the bill. I hope that you just mistaken my friends with other customers who ate the food and didn’t like it being included in the bill. Otherwise, it’s so disgraceful to accuse a person of lying in a reply to their review. And on top of that you got personal with a comment “you tend to enjoy ranting on google reviews. I DO FIND THAT SAD FOR YOU”. Seriously? So you, as a restaurant owner (or idk who reply to the review here) you checked her profile, checked her other reviews and decided to comment on it with an additional “I do find that sad for you”. Well, I do find that a very unprofessional attitude.

I used to be a frequent customer before moving out of the UK 1.5 years ago. Today I came back and I must say I was deeply disappointed with pretty much everything: 1. Food - way different and significant reduced quality. The solomillo was very low quality 2. Menu- reduced, more expensive 3. Bread - used to be a very good quality bread, now it’s a plain white bread (like long lasting waitroes version) 4. Service - people speaking very poor English with zero understanding of the menu. Asked a waiter to change my cutlery after eating shrimp (before eating meat) and he was looking at me surprised and not understanding at all Spoke with the floor manger who works with the chain for 4 years and did recognized the change… In summary, I am honestly disappointed to see how things have changed and to see how overall quality was drastically decreased!

This is one of my favourite restaurants the food is amazing.