Las Iguanas – restaurant review

Las Iguanas is celebrating 25 years in 2016, having transformed over the last quarter of a century from one small restaurant on St Nicholas Street (now home to Chomp) to dozens now spread across the UK including such prestigious locations as the Royal Festival Hall and the O2 in London, with the latest due to open this month in Harrogate.

It’s a bonafide Bristol success story and one that most restaurant businesses can only dream of emulating, with the latest plans to take the brand worldwide with the help of franchises. Perhaps one day soon, Brazilian dishes developed in Bristol could be being served in Brazil.

Back in Bristol, there is the head office and restaurant on Whiteladies Road and two other restaurants in Cribbs Causeway and Millennium Square.

The latter is next to an empty corner of the square behind Bordeaux Quay that is currently being marketed by the city council as a hotel and restaurant opportunity. For now, Las Iguanas has the suntrap outside seating area all to themselves.

It was, however, jacket and scarf weather on a recent Friday lunchtime which coincided with the launch of a new spring menu – with Las Iguanas kitchen staff as always making more than 30 salsas and sauces by hand each day, chefs creating food inspired by Latin America.

Impressively, my vegan wife was given her own menu which on the other side also included gluten-free options. Two glasses of caipirinha made pondering the dozens of options more manageable, and before too long our enthusiastic waitress Maria was bringing dish after dish to our table.

Ceviche is one of the new additions to the menu and although it could have done with a touch more chilli, it was a well thought out version of Peru’s national dish with raw white fish coming with a lime, ginger and Amarillo chilli dressing.

Also new on the menu is a moqueca to peixe, with more of those sustainable white fish being joined by peeled prawns and cooked in a creamy coconut, tomato and lime sauce. Other the over side of the table, there was another moqueca – this time a vegetarian version with butternut squash; with both presented in pottery jars kept hot balanced on another jar with a candle underneath.

We cleared our plates thanks to the addition of a new bread board made up of sliced ciabatta, jalapeno and buttermilk cornbread.

Office workers talked shop on our lunchtime visit, and this Las Iguanas is also a popular after-work drinking spot especially when the sun is shining, with families flocking to the restaurant at the weekend it being conveniently located a few yards away from At-Bristol.

Bristol’s best restaurant success story of recent years continues to go from strength to strength. Here’s to another 25 years.

Las Iguanas, Unit A, South Building, Anchor Square, BS1 5UH
0117 927 6233

www.iguanas.co.uk/locations/bristol-harbourside

Photos by Jelena Belec