J, despite being younger than me, often seems to act like she is an octogenarian. A case in point is her love of a Florida style early bird dinner (so far as I can tell she also eats Sunday lunch at about 09.30 sending me pics of the leo peas, which need to be steeped for about 35 years before they can be cooked, that she inexplicably loves before I have even had breakfast).

She seems very happy to eat at 5pm whereas I am pretty ambivalent as to when I eat and have no issue with a late- ish dinner time, although I do struggle a bit with Spanish dinner time (10pm upwards, so always make sure lunch is the main meal when out there).

I do, however, rather like an early doors finish on a Friday (if truth be told I don’t work at all on a Friday if I can help it, a small benefit of being self employed) or indeed any day of the working week.

So my love of an early work finish and J’s love of a Florida early bird dinner bought us to Bodega in the Lakeside burb of Cardiff, which has a definite Spanish feel to it (who would never eat dinner at 17.00), for a long overdue catch up.

The offer they are currently running seemed ideal

and on the face of it a rather good deal to boot, although a couple of things raised slight concerns:

• The “selected dishes” carve out re the Plates element of the menu; and
• The “mini” prefacing the words “wine flight“.

As to the first one, having looked at the menu on line, the stuff I fancied “Plate” wise was all at the higher price end and I worried they would all be carved out.

The actual menu was slightly different,

but still had on it the flat iron and the iberico secreto (I instantly thought that the sea bream would definitely be off limits). I quite liked the look of these over the veggie options.

On the second point, did the mini mean a mini pour or a mini flight of decent pours or a mini flight of mini pours? Also pours of what?

Back to the food, I must admit the reference in the menu to the ability to “upscale” your patatas bravas with “kaviar” rather perplexed me. I hate the concept of an expensive, ostentatious, add on, as if a dish benefits from the addition of the likes of caviar (here “kaviar“) then put it on it to start with, if it doesn’t then why add it at a seemingly unnecessary extra cost? Here I really question what benefit it brings other than identifying the orderer as a “Oooh, look at me” poser.

Also (Kalles) kaviar (starting with a K rather than a C) is generally known (well it is by me) as a relatively cheap fish roe spread popular in Scandi countries.

So is this a spelling mistake (in respect of which I am a world authority, holding the Guinness world record for typos in a single blog post – we all have to be good at something) or is it the Scandi equivalent of taramasalata (a blob of which for £6 seems a tad steep)?

Anyhow I digress, so back to the matter at hand. Based on the diminutive £30 price tag here it is difficult to complain much, but it is me so…….!

On the food front it transpired that the offer worked (as explained by our very helpful server) as follows:

• All snack, bar from the jamon Iberico, were included
• Both flat bread were included.
• All veggie plates were included, as well as the fish dishes subject to the caveat that the sea bream attracted a £10 supplement.
• All of the meat dishes attracted a £5 supplement.

I am not a huge fan of supplements, with my view being if it is advertised as a fixed price it should be fixed, but as J pointed out £35 is still not a bad price at all when you get a snack, flat bread, meat dish and a flight of wine.

I would argue that they would be better off just upping the price to £35 and include all the meat dishes. J countering that that would make it all a bit pricey for veggies, with my counter counter being ” and….”.

Personally I would shift the patatas bravas to the snack section so you can choose to have some pots with your meat option should you so wish ( I suspect that is precisely why they haven’t, with thus there being the temptation to add them as an extra on top of the deal).

We started off with a couple of snacks in the form of the gildas

and the padron peppers.

Both good dishes, with the padrons well salted, nicely blistered and sitting on a good chimichurri (sharp, with a robust herbal twang). Alas again not a fabled hot padron in there (not convinced they really exist as I dont know any one that has had a really hot one).

The gildas were that pleasing mix of sour, salt and heat, although a bit more robustly sized guindilla pepper wouldn’t have gone amiss.

We then moved on to the flat breads, with us able to order one of each of the options on offer and this share half of each

Contrary to the flat bread moniker, these had quite a rise to the crust.

The smoked ham hock number had a nice saline meatiness from the ham and a refreshing hit from the pico de gallo. Can’t say I got much heat from the advertised jalapeño emulsion.

The second flat bread combined zingy anchovies (white rather than the fully salted brown ones) with sharp capers and pink pickled onions, balanced by a touch of moscatel sweetness.

I think on balance I slightly preferred the anchovy number, but both were good.

Early doors in our menu perusal process we have decided to trade up to the meat plates eschewing the veggie options (thus paying a £5 supplement each).

An iberico secreto skewer came with a good ajo blanco (later a predominately  almond and garlic emulsion).

The pork had a good flavour, but was slighly marred by some bits of it being a touch tough. On the plus side, the piquillo glaze did add a pleasing touch of smokiness.

A flat iron steak was cooked medium rare (as per our request). Whilst a good bit of well flavoured steak it, perhaps,  could have done with just a tad more resting time (with a bit of blood leaching into the sauce).

I enjoyed the Perl Las sauce (much to J’s chagrin as she blames me for Asador 44 taking their blue cheese sauce off the menu – as if I have any such influence), with the blue cheese there but not overpoweringly so, as well as the pickled mustard seeds and dinky fried shallot rings. Blood leakage aside, I think this was my favourite dish of the night.

I would say a bread option (happy as an added extra) would have been nice for sauce mopping up purposes.

On the booze front, as mentioned above, the deal includes a mini flight of (3) wines. We asked for two reds and a white, but otherwise left it up to them as to what these were.

What we got were small pours of:

• Loimer Grüner Vetliner (Kamptal,Austria);
• Domino do Bibei, Lacima, Mencia dominated blend  (Ribeira Sacra, Spain); and
• Chateau Tour de Capet, Merlot dominated blend ( St Emilion, France).

The Loimer had nice notes of green apple and citrus, although I don’t really get much (if any) of grüner’s trademark white pepperiness. It worked well with the snack elements of the meal and the anchovy flat bread

The Lacima is an old favourite of mine with lots of black cherries, peppery spice and a good level of refreshing acidity.  Excellent wine this, that paired well with both the smoked ham flat bread and the meat dishes.

The Chateau Tour de Capet had plenty of dark ripe fruits, as well as vanilla spice, and was good with the meat dishes.

Out of the 3 wines we both favoured the Lacima, so we ordered a couple of large glasses of it to finish off the steak dish.

This brings me to the wine prices here.

None of the wines in the mini flight are cheap wines, with the Loimer retailing at around £18 at bottle, the Chateau Tour de Capet at about £28 a bottle and the Lacima a whopping £48+ a bottle . As these are not cheap wines, it is very commendable/surprising/close to astonishing that wines like these are included in the all in £30 price here.  Based on only a 50 ml pour of each (looked tad more to me) you are still looking at £15+ (based on the 50ml list prices) for the wine flight alone.

If the idea is to encourage people to buy these wines then it worked as we both ordered a large (175ml – £21.30) glass of the Lacima.  This may seem a lot, but the bottle price here for it is £85 and based on a £48+retail price that is not bad at all for the UK.

They do do desserts,

which looked very nice, but we passed.

The verdict

I think this is a really good deal, with the wine alone coming in at £15+ and the plates we had coming in at £18 each on the al a carte menu. As such, even with the meat mark up, we got the snack and flat bread pretty much free. The tactic of given good wines as part of the mini flight worked as we added a fair bit to the bill with a £21+  glass of wine each. The bill was still pretty reasonable.

We continued next door, at State of Love and Trust (with their very good £10 corkage on top of the off the shelf price of in store wine).

A bottle of Greek xinomarvo (with some Torres jamon crisps) was a rather nice way to end the evening, with lots of berry fruit and a distinctly meaty finish, and I was back home well before 21.00.

I like the innovation here, with an offer to pull in the punters. Once through the door there is then the ability to upsell on both the food and booze front (which we took), but you have got to get people through the door first.

I do think hospitality as a whole (in order to survive) is going to need to innovate more and more in order to entice in increasingly hard pressed punters.

The details

Address: 21 Clear Water Way, Cardiff CF23 6DL

Website: https://www.bodegawine.bar/#bookbodega-1

Offer is available for (evening service only I assume) orders before 18.00, Tuesday through Saturday.

Normal opening hours are as follows: