El Bareto - Gluten Free Spanish Restaurant, Leeds

A good gluten free restaurant that is reasonably priced can be hard to find. Sure you can go to a Michelin starred place and due to the chefs knowledge and the 'to order' way of cooking you can get yourself a great GF meal, but its gonna be pricey. Cheaper places tend to have pre-made dishes, or ones which elements cannot be removed to make them suitable, sometimes staff simply are not knowledgeable enough.

On a recent visit to Wakefield to find myself and a friend somewhere to eat we bobbed our heads into a pizza and pasta place that also does the usual Italian chicken and fish dishes too. I asked if they had any gluten free dishes and after a quick check with the chef was told no, nothing was gluten free. Nothing? Not even some chicken salad? Grilled fish? Had a flour bomb gone off in the kitchen? We went to an alternative Italian place where my grilled sea bass and vegetables were lovely and gluten free with no fuss.

So, El Bareto in Chapel Allerton, North of Leeds is a fantastic find for anyone who is in the Leeds area and who is gluten free. It's a very authentic Spanish place, warm and friendly, and for me feels like Spain, especially the places in Barcelona who try their best to be Spanish for the tourists. Cue the red cushions, bench seats, rough yellow walls, plenty of candles and dark wooden tables. Some of the staff really are Spanish too, no fake accents here!

The menu is typically Spanish in its content and also the way you order, with the menu being a paper list of tapas, salads and paella availble that you simply tick with the pen provided. The great news is that gluten free items are marked with a GF next to them, and all but the dishes you really cant make gluten free are so. Even the paella that often falls foul to non GF stock.

We ordered eight dishes, one too many as always with tapas! We shared them mostly, except the patatas bravas and chorizo which were not suitable for me. We did have GF garlic prawns, potato and onion tortilla, green salad, pepper chicken, grilled mushroom and cheese and grilled whole squid. All were yummy and much larger than the tapas portions you may be used to at chain bars like Le Tasca. I have had the paella here before and it was fantastic, but best for a large party.

For dessert I had a Spanish homemade version of a creme caramel, that was huge! Very good too. The husband had a toffee cheesecake, which is very unlike him so the must not have been a chocolate fudge cake on the menu.

Our bill came to £65, which included eight tapas dishes, two desserts, a glass of red and a glass of white wine. Nom nom nom!

There is a nice review by someone on the Yokshire Post website for El Bareto too, they only had four dishes, but they did have a whole bottle of wine. Maybe their eyes are not bigger than their stomach like mine!

El Bareto - 120 Gledhow Valley Rd , Leeds North , LS17 6LX - 0113 266 6946