The Norfolk Arms

I try and come here whenever I make a trip into London. The food is so good, it’s a really great place to spend an hour or two eating and drinking and relaxing. Highly recommended.

Fantastic tapas. Great choice, absolutely delicious! The staff were very friendly & remembered us from a previous visit. Would highly recommend

This is an absolute gem near Kings Cross.
Options of either tapas or main courses. Decent selection of wine. Lovely staff and a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
Really nice pumpkin risotto and crab, delicious cheese and the food was lovely and hot and tasty!!
Thank you!
Takes American Express.

The standard of food and service here is simply exceptional. Atmosphere relaxed and feels like a small part of Spain 🇪🇸in London. Or at least it does if you order from the tapas menu. Thoroughly enjoyed my visit and will definitely return.

Booked a table at 5pm for 8pm and they were happy to have us! Managed to give us a lovely table for 2 outside and the staff were super attentive. Food is INCREDIBLE - I’ve not had tapas as good as this anywhere in London! Reasonably priced and wines are fantastic! Been 3 times in the last 6 weeks and won’t be long until we’re back! Definitely a hidden gem and well worth a visit ! Many thanks!

Fantastic food as always. Good selection of wine and beer. Charming atmosphere, peak Bloomsbury! Friendly waiters, quick service, nothing more one could ask for!

I’d gone here for many years with friends before moving to the States. Happy to see it hasn’t changed through lockdown. The tapas are just as good as they were on my last visit 3 years ago.

The perfect place for an foodie date - warm, charming surroundings and fantastic staff. The food is incredible - stunning fresh twists on classic mediteran fare. Beautiful quality tapas. Just really gorgeous food. Its pricey - but it's a classy joint so it's worth the treat.

Went in this pub twice and was not impressed .only been in there 10 mins and was told last orders this was 9.45 pm!!! barmaid was quite snotty as well .more atmosphere on the moon .never again

I am so impressed by this place. First, the manager was kind enough to provide takeaway boxes for me and even wrapped the peppers stuffed with cheese in aluminium foil so they wouldn't drip through the box. I also got the Blue cabrales bruschetta, toasted walnut, wild thyme honey and whilst the flavour was phenomenal and the cheese portion generous, I was a bit disappointed it was all on only one piece of bread. For about 6 pounds, I think three pieces should be given with slightly less cheese on each. Otherwise relaxed atmosphere when arrived early evening last Friday.

It's a pub! But it's a tapas place! It's a pub! BUT IT'S A TAPAS PLACE!

What a delight you are, Norfolk Arms!

Although they do have larger plates (see: rotating menu, but standards like roast chicken and pork with crackling) the key here is to explore their tapas and 'boards' selections. In the case of the latter we're talking a meat board with four types of charcuterie, a cheese board accompanied by some perfectly crumbly oat biscuits, a fish board with salmon, mackerel and eel, and a veggie antipasto board which was the stunner of them all: marinated artichokes

This is a lovely, dog friendly, pub to wander over to on a nice sunny day or lunch out with colleagues.

Good mix of Spanish and Greek tapas that you can share with others or snarf down yourself. ;)

Good pub, nice atmosphere and staff. A hungry group, we ordered almost everything on the tapas menu. Have the humus and the babaganush, the pork belly, the chicken wings, and the potatas bravas. The octopus and chorizo is good, and the ham and rocket sandwich was as well. Everything else is cheap, fine but forgettable.

We ate here a couple of weeks ago and found it average at best. Its disappointing to me as we purposely sought it out for dinner that night.
We visit Spain a lot and love tapas - we accept that when you get it in the UK usually you will pay more than Spain. However the prices here are steep even for London for what you actually get. The service was spotty we felt like we were an inconvenience to the waitress who set me up with a tab at the bar showed us to a table took the order then told us they closed in 20 mins.
The tapas itself was as uninspiring as it gets - low on imagination and taste.
I

It's an OK restaurant, the food was not bad but not a highlight either. If you are in the area and want to go for tapas you can try this place. But I wouldn't travel to the area just to go here.

We were 9 with small kids and got a private room upstairs which was ideal.
Beet root & goat cheese was a winner.
Baked giant beans was a flop.

What a great find in Bloomsbury. We are new to London but wanted to take some visitors out for a mid-week meal somewhere central. Found this little place on the Timeout website. It looks like a typical pub but the focus is on the food - primarily a HUGE selection of different tapas. We shared six tapas between the six of us and all went away happy.

Recommend the ham croquettes, amazing!

The meal came to £80 for four people with tapas and two bottles of wine.

On our last night in London my wife and I decided to get lost to find a hidden gem. To locals this might not be hidden (as the place was packed) but to us it was not near a main road so it was by chance that we found it.

My wife has been on the hunt for beef roast with Yorkshire pounding. They had it and she ordered it. I was having a hard time because everything sounded so good so I ask for a recommendation and the waiter said "you should both have the roast beef."

The beef was tender, the veggies were good, the au jou was fantastic!

The only thing is the service could have been

Have walked past late every night as commuter and generally always busy so went for late Sunday food (served until 10pm) when staying over. 2 beers well served (GreeneKing and Theakstons) and 4 lagers. Large tapas menu mostly priced £5.50 and 'roast' £12.50. The roast (Welsh lamb) was served in medium sized tapas bowl with a very (!) rich gravy. Pretty good but maybe a few pounds overpriced. Would return but stick with the tapas next time. Very much a sit down pub (good street side areas) as no room at the bar to stand.
Good standard of service with pleasant staff.

I went to the Norfolk Arms for dinner with four people. We shared tapas.

The food was good - not amazing, but not bad. Very average for London, but the prices were reasonable. The portion sizes were good, and two-three dishes each was enough. I particularly liked the spare ribs with crackling, and the salted cod.

Service was also average. We were sat in a corner near the back, and at times we felt like we had been forgotten. But the staff were friendly and attentive. Unfortunately we weren't able to sit outside (there were quite a few tables, but they were taken). It was a hot summers day

Attractive, but ultimately typical and uninspired, gastropub. Quite small, there is not much space to dwell if you are not eating, which to me makes it a restaurant/bar, certainly not a pub.


The hope of something interesting to drink was immediately dashed as an empty glass was rammed onto the Theakstons XB pump as soon as we tried to order it. They were thus left with only their Pride intact. Yawn.

1 visit: 3/5

I went here on a Friday night. It was very busy so we couldn't sit inside. They have picnic tables outside with heat lamps, but it was still very cold. When I went inside to get drinks I found it very cramped but the décor was nice and contemporary. Service was a bit slow (inattentive bartenders). I saw that they do food and seem to specialise in cured meats, but I didn't have any. They have a good selection of beers on tap including a couple of ales.

All in all I won't be going out of my way to come back to this pub. Even if it were quieter, it still doesn't

My friend and I went to this pub to relax and wind down after spending the whole day in London. We sat at the outside area of the pub, but we did go inside. Although I did not eat the food since we were already full from eating at other places in the city that did not stop us from getting some drinks. We both got a couple pints of Sagres, which was a fairly refreshing beer.

It was also fairly quiet for a pub on an early Saturday night, which I was surprised, but I guess that's because the people don't come out until a little later. Despite the quietness, I really liked the cosy atmosphere

I imagine this would be a nice place to come on a date, but I agree with the comments about travelling distance. So, let's say a nice place to go for a date if you live/work in the area.

A classy dark wood interior, absolutely rammed with people on the Tuesday evening that I visited. Rustic dining room upstairs, with wipe-clean red gingham tablecloths and, curiously, thick teatowels as napkins. The downstairs bar and area and upstairs room were both candlelit and cosily atmospheric.

An impressively long menu with an entire side of tapas dishes. A bit on the pricey side (especially

Norfolk Arms says it serves "excellent modern English food in a tapas style" but it felt like a Spanish joint to me. Ham legs hang in the front window, greeting you as you enter, cured meats are strung behind the bar, and the blackboard touts sherries.

The menu is obscenely large - more than 30 tapas plates are listed on one side of the card while the other was full of starters, a handful of mains, and dessert.

I ordered the Ploughmans, which had a steep price of £11. Slices of baked ham were spread out to cover the wooden board and heavily drizzled with olive oil. A ramekin of

Spanish food and wine, good service. The lamb chop particularly delicious. Clearly popular. A find.

This review is simple. It is based on how far you would travel to go to this pub. I got a cab here from Smithfields. That was too far. This is a 5 minute walk kind of place as the food just doesn't go beyond that.

The American friends I brought loved the interior (which is beautiful) but thankfully the jet lag stopped them properly critiquing the food as I thoroughly let them down with my choice of restaurant.

I took some visiting family members back in December for lunch. The downstairs area was full, and we were quoted a wait time, but when we turned to leave they opened up the upstairs dining room (which quickly filled up with more diners as we got settled).

The service was average until we received our drinks and food, after which point we were left sitting for an extended period waiting to request a bill.

We ordered tapas, and, while some plates were better than others, all were tasty and didn't go uneaten. The fresh bread basket with a variety of loaves hit the spot right away. The onions

A relatively new gastro pub which apparently does good food, which I have yet to try but am very eager to.
I came after a hearty meal with my dad at the North Sea Fish, just opposite, and we just wanted to sit and enjoy a some quiet drinks, and he Norfolk Arms on the quiet Leigh Street was just right for it. They do a good list of wines, in which we each had a glass of their house white and nibbled on some bar snacks.
They do a great tapas list from the bar, with such dishes as tortilla, chickpea and tomato stew, hummus and pita, and the list just goes on long and delicious.

Their main food