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We are a Spanish style tapas restaurant and bar located in Oxford Street, Southampton in the heart of the restaurant district and we are Southamptons only restaurant to serve all Spanish tapas. We do not offer the ’starter, main course and dessert’ menu of most restaurants but let our customers choose how many dishes to have, and as in Spain there is no need to hurry.
For those still with room after a leisurely tapas meal we do of course have a selection of delicious home made desserts as well as coffee and drinks from the bar.
La Esquina is the culmination of a project that has taken almost 2 years to complete. Although we were both gainfully employed, me in sales and marketing and my husband Ian in security we both knew that these were not jobs we wanted to do forever as my travelling and Ian’s shift patterns meant that in some weeks we barely saw each other.
We had often talked about running our own business and doing something for ourselves where we could spend more time together. A tea rooms or café was our first thought but this soon evolved into something completely different that would capture our love of Spain, their cooking and the Spanish way of life. So we thought “why not open a wine and Tapas bar?”
During many years of visiting Spain to stay in our apartment on the Costa Del Sol we had sampled and enjoyed many different Spanish dishes and Tapas, both on our own and with our growing crowd of Spanish friends and adopted Spanish family. If this is the kind of thing that we enjoyed we were sure that others who had visited Spain and the Mediterranean would surely love too.
In February 2007 we decided to stop talking about this dream and do something to make it happen! Our property search began with a corner shop and hence the name La Esquina (the corner) was born. Although we didn’t manage to secure that particular property, there were more to follow including one we fell in love with which was also on a corner. However this was not to be and we were finally fortunate enough to secure our current restaurant site at 40 Oxford Street, although it is not on a corner by now the name has firmly stuck!
Our aim is to try to recreate some of the Spanish Tapas that we have enjoyed in a very rustic yet authentic way and we hope that this will compliment the relaxed and informal dining atmosphere that we would like our customers to enjoy.