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This big bar on a corner of Westbourne Grove has an imaginative list of Spanish wines with a good selection by the glass, and an extensive choice of cava which shows the range of sparkling wine styles coming out of the Penedès region.
There is also a buffet of canapé-sized nibbles that you help yourself to, all costing £2.50 each.
Pix claims inspiration from the pintxo bars of northern Spain, but the food just wasn’t up to scratch on our visit.
The slices of baguette that formed the base of many items were too thick, and neither crisply toasted nor fresh enough; they tasted as if they were going stale.
The snacks were designed to look good – fried quail eggs, tiny slices of black pudding, air-dried ham – but just didn’t deliver in flavour. For example, a shot glass of tomato juice was watery, and not the intensely flavoured version that more talented chefs can create; it looked the part, but missed the point.
All the dishes were room temperature, which didn’t help.
A tab of the bill is kept by the number of wooden ‘lollipops’ you accumulate with each dish – but these are whisked away as you eat, making it hard to keep track or check your bill.
The service on our visit lacked professionalism. We rang before visiting, to be told ‘bookings aren’t taken, just show up’. So we did, at 6.45pm, to find a half-empty restaurant. ‘Have you booked? No? Well, you can have this table until 8.30pm.’ We queried the booking policy. ‘We’re not meant to take bookings, but some of the staff were being kind.’
Service was sweet, though. The wrong wine was brought, and smilingly replaced. We paid the bill as cash, and were brought the change – £10 short (but they’d been so nice we let them have it as the tip anyway).
As the evening wore on, the bar became busy, and very loud. We were glad to leave and go to another, far preferable wine bar nearby where we could hear each other speak.