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There was quite an interesting reaction to my post about the new Brindisa place Tramontana in Shoreditch. Let me repeat that I had a great time there - I thought the food was very accomplished, the staff friendly and I loved what they'd done with the room and open kitchen. But, it seems, not many other people did. You can read the comments from disappointed customers yourself on the post, but as well as those, no less than food & wine writer Fiona Beckett, whose tastes normally overlap mine fairly reliably, didn't think much of it.
I'm not sure which is stranger, though - that different people could have such different reactions to a meal in the same restaurant within the space of a week, or that, given our wildly differing fetishes and foibles, we ever have enough in common to recommend a restaurant at all. I mean think about this - some people don't even like Tayyabs. I know! Madness.
Following Tramontanagate then, and given the practical impossibility of finding an objectively good restaurant, it perhaps shouldn't have been too much of a surprise that much-loved and award-winning tapas bar Copita didn't excite me as I thought it was going to. But I was mainly disappointed not because I was expecting it to be brilliant, but because I really wanted it to be brilliant - another reliable ham-and-sherry outlet in the centre of London is always cause for celebration.
The first problem was with the Iberico ham, and given my hopeless addiction to the stuff I find it quite hard to forgive problems with Iberico ham. It was £15 for a fairly mean portion - close to the same amount that José sell for £9 - and was pretty badly carved, shredded and hacked into weird irregular bits and pieces, much of it dry and chewy. The flavour was still good, but the way it had been treated made me sad inside.
The rest was better, fortunately. Mussel croquettas weren't anywhere near as weird as they sound, in fact they were better than those at Tramontana, with a nice golden crust and creamy filling. Crispy cauliflower & piquillo sauce began enjoyably, delicately encrusted and seasoned well, but the sauce was underpowered and there wasn't enough of it, so very soon all you were eating was fried cauliflower and wishing you weren't. A lamb bun with harissa was very good though, my favourite overall, with tender chunks of slow-cooked lamb and a good kick from the harissa.
We got a cheese board too but as the waitress merely dumped them and ran off without explaining what they were, I can't tell you much about them other than I liked the gooey goat's and spongey blue, but the harder (mountain?) cheese was a bit bland. £11, mind.
With the cheapest bottle of sherry, itself a whacking £39, the total for two came to £88 and it's really in the value-for-money department that Copita loses most of its stars. The food was good, but not extraordinarily so, and I'm sure Soho rents have as much of an effect on the bill as the cost of ingredients which were generally of a high standard, but I couldn't help feeling that we didn't get a great deal for our £44 a head and had we been hungrier and thirstier the results could have been disastrous. Then again, perhaps you'll visit yourself, have a great time for a pittance and wonder what the hell I was moaning about. Such is the strange business of writing about restaurants.
6/10
Copita have been in touch to point out that their cheapest sherry is £15 for a half bottle, so a bit cheaper than the £39 full bottle we had.
Poor old Brindisa. Once upon a time they were the unchallenged masters of Spanish food in London, beloved by punters, raved about by critics, showered with awards. Then one day some upstart employee called José Pizarro gets ideas above his station and decides to open his own place, an insultingly short walk away from the Borough Market flagship bar. And as if that wasn't enough, next thing you know this José character has them queueing out of the door every night and starts collecting awards like they're going out of fashion. The cheek.
Of course, they have nothing to worry about. While faddish foodies (guilty) chase after the novelty and the new, Brindisa's mini chain of restaurants (now four in number) has been quietly and confidently getting on with producing some of the best Spanish food this side of the Pyrenees. I have never had a bad meal at any of their sites, and if last night is anything to go by, the latest addition to the fold will be nothing but another roaring success.
Tramontana have kept the basic internal layout of previous occupant Saf, but the vast open kitchen has really come alive now it's hung with legs of ham and lit by flaring pans instead of being a plating area for sad little piles of vegan food. (I'm told Saf have a stall in the food hall at Whole Foods Kensington these days, if you miss them terribly. Anyone? No, didn't think so.) It's a really lovely room, and the quiet garden out back will be fantastic, too, once summer returns - in the pissing October rain it's a slightly less attractive option.
There wasn't much to fault with any of the food. Boquerones were sharp and soft, draped over rustic house potato chips. Croquettas, while not quite as good as the supremely accomplished versions from the Other Place on Bermondsey Street, still were perfectly good, stuffed full of rich béchamel and salty nuggets of Iberico ham. And a separate plate of Iberico ham - surely a foodstuff that's as close to proof of the existence of God as you can find - was utter perfection, sliced into exact squares each containing just the right amount of fat and meat.
A daily special of mushrooms and truffle was probably only disappointing next to the quality of other dishes, but I did think it could have done with a lot more truffle and a lot more seasoning. Fortunately the same criticism couldn't be levelled at some little slices of cured tuna, which were incredibly punchy - pretty little things too, glowing in deep red.
Strangely, considering I've spent most of my holidays in Girona every year since I was 8 years old, this was the first time I've ever had fideuà. Best described as a Catalan version of a paella made with noodles instead of rice, this version contained huge, meaty prawns and cubes of squid, the noodles clumping together in satisfying chunks. Bacalao (Catalan for salt fish) was gorgeous too, moist and rich and balanced on top of a commendably light mayonnaise.
Then finally, if Tramontana hadn't already ticked enough boxes in my personal "how to do restaurants right" list, they also do a burger. The slider-size "black and white" is made from white Catalan butifarra sausage and morcilla (black pudding), and is so good it even gives the Opera Tavern's Iberico & foie gras version a run for its money. And at £4.50, it's also a bit of a bargain.
With a £30 bottle of Fino, all this came to just over £97 including service, and between three people I think that's very fair. In all honesty, I knew I was going to enjoy Tramontana - I've been a fan of Brindisa for almost as long as they've been serving food in London. But a restaurant as enjoyable and accomplished as this is never simply inevitable. It's the result of hard work, attention to the important details and, of course, being incredibly good at what you do. That their fourth restaurant still has the capacity to surprise and delight is testament to an extraordinary talent, and London is all the richer for having them.
9/10
Even as the paint was drying at MeatMarket, the second outpost of MeatLiquor, I saw someone on Twitter describe them as a "chain". How running just two restaurants in the same city, with different menus, makes them the next McDonald's I'm not sure, but it got me thinking about what exactly does constitute a chain. "Lots of identical restaurants all serving exactly the same food" seems a straightforward place to start, and there are no shortage of examples that fit this description, although even McDonald's tailor and tweak their menu to local tastes, and the interiors of any Nando's I've ever been inside (not that many, since you ask) have been commendably diverse.
The word "chain", then, isn't so much a category of restaurant as an insult thrown at anywhere that looks like it's sacrificed individuality and care for corporate consistency and shareholder returns. The ETM Group, for instance, despite running ten sites across London, avoids the "chain" label because each of its pubs has a proper chef and a unique menu, whereas the Real Greek, which I'm reliably informed was once one of the tiny number of places you could get good Greek food in London, has long since expanded, sold out and is now a "chain". The Polpo restaurants aren't a chain, Carluccio's is. The Galvin restaurants aren't a chain, but Café Rouge is. It's all in the attitude.
Vinoteca, then, isn't a chain, even though there are three in London now - the original in Farringdon which is always rammed (no mean feat when you've got St John as a neighbour), one in Marylebone and this, the latest, just a couple of doors down from Polpo and right opposite Bob Bob Ricard. Perhaps they like to choose their locations based on the quality of the competition; I expect the fourth will be in Cartmel or Bray.
Sorry about the appalling photos; it was quite dark in our little corner of the room and they turned out badly even by the desperately low standards of this blog. Suffice to say that these three chorizo croquettas did not look like beached sea cucumbers in real life, and tasted pretty good despite the overly thick, greasy crust and not quite enough béchamel inside.
House bread did a good enough job, and a bowl of salty "Catalan" almonds (not sure whether they were Catalan by origin or cooking style) from the 'snack' menu were just about worth £3, but the first bit of proper cooking was a grilled mackerel fillet in watermelon sauce, a great charred skin and moist flesh demonstrating that someone in the Vinoteca kitchens knows how to cook fish.
Unfortunately, though, the same care and attention hadn't been shown to this artichoke, which was overcooked and seems to have lost most of its tender internal leaves, perhaps an over-zealous effort to remove the hairs from the top of the heart. The dipping sauce was OK but I've certainly had better artichokes.
Best of the mains was my rose veal and girolles, a generous portion of tender veal and silky mushrooms in a garlic butter sauce. At £18 it was at the upper end of what you might want to pay for this kind of thing, but you did get plenty on the plate for your money.
Baked tomato, ricotta & swiss chard "tart" was bizarre though - a square of pastry topped with tomato and chard, looking like a square pizza, and a huge mound of completely tasteless curd on top. The combination of everything in one mouthful wasn't unpleasant, but it's still quite far off what you might expect from something called a "tart" and I got the distinct impression this was just one of those token vegetarian options, the chef's heart not really in it.
So, serviceable food and for not a huge amount of money but not really anything to get the pulse racing. However, Vinoteca has a trick up its sleeve in the form of a huge and carefully built wine list, and I imagine it's for this that many will choose to visit. I am not a wine buff, and will always be more interested in what's on my plate than in my glass, but I know plenty of people who tend to match food to wine than vice versa, and as nice-but-not-exceptional, the food at Vinoteca is perhaps deliberately pitched to play second fiddle to the wine and provide those who appreciate such things a different way of enjoying an evening out.
And it's for that reason I can't be too down on Vinoteca. It's far too easy, in any blog post, to point out mistakes with the food than just say that, actually, none of it was disastrous and the atmosphere and service in this attractive building in the heart of Soho still meant that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Service was attentive and friendly even before my cover was blown (I was invited to review but managed to slink in and find a table without giving my name) and judging by the happy crowd that had found their way into the centre of town as Olympics Mania raged all around them, it has its fans. Like those that came before in Farringdon and Marylebone, it's sure to do well.
7/10
I was invited to review Vinoteca
Someone pointed out on Twitter the other day that with the launch of Bar Pepito, Capote y Toros (review coming soon on London Confidential if they ever get round to launching the site) and now José in Bermondsey, London now has more dedicated ham and sherry bars than Barcelona. Whether or not this is completely accurate - and I think it's probably a bit unfair to Barcelona where ham and sherry isn't really a Catalan thing - it's nevertheless a trend I can thoroughly get behind. In fact, it's surprising it's taken this country so long to wake up to the combination of Iberico ham and cold sherry, as you'd have to be lacking a significant part of your brain (or be a vegetarian, and let's face it that's more or less the same thing) not to enjoy these most wonderful ingredients. Iberico ham, in particular, is a genuine gastronomic wonder; produced correctly and carved properly it has an almost impossibly rich, complex flavour that builds the longer you hold it in your mouth, with notes of forest and moss and the acorns that the pampered black pigs themselves feed on. It's my Desert Island dish, my Death Row meal, my one true food love.
The Iberico ham at José, you'll be pleased to hear, was superb, sliced into translucent strips and arranged carefully on a salad plate for £9. Great value, and value in the most literal sense - this is a world-class product, expensive to produce and requiring specialist skill to present, and alarm bells should ring if it's ever priced at anything less than a premium. We savoured the silken shards of pig in between mouthfuls of the always wonderful La Gitana Manzanilla, the salty sherry matching it perfectly.
If we'd only gone to José to get deliriously happy on Iberico and Manzanilla it still would have been far from a wasted journey, but certain items on the chalkboard menu just sounded too good to miss so despite a large (and expensive and ultimately rather disappointing, more here anon) lunch elsewhere we still found room to squeeze in a plate of croquettas and something called "Pluma Iberica". Firstly, the croquettas were something approaching perfect - a delicate thin crust broke to reveal a soft béchamel filling shot through with dark chunks of more of that brilliant ham, they were as good as any I've had in Spain or anywhere else for that matter. But the Pluma Iberica was truly astonishing. Strips of pork seasoned and seared to rare, they were served simply with a couple of strips of preserved piquillo peppers (try saying that after a bottle of Manzanilla), and tasted, thanks to aggressive seasoning and expert timing on the grill, like the finest aged beef steak, marbled with fat and bursting with flavour. It's a dish rarely seen in this country, presumably because serving pork even pink is a controversial step to some people, never mind as under as this, but I will be eternally grateful for José for having the cojones to put it on the menu here. I still can't stop thinking about it.
Three tapas and a bottle of Manzanilla may seem like a rather flimsy amount of food to base a whole review around but I have every confidence that everything else at José, including the fresh seafood which looked magnificent presented under a glass case in the counter of the bar, would have been equally wonderful had we found room for it. In fact, you don't even have to take my word - see the Dos Hermanos review here, or the gushing reports that are stacking up on London Eating. Or, and this is something you absolutely must do, just go yourself. José is as good a restaurant as you could ever want.
9/10
For all the North London vs South London debate, the merits of the grill houses of Whitechapel vs those of Tooting, whether you prefer a Vietnamese from Kingsland Road or a Turkish from Green Lanes, there is one thing I think we can all agree on - Canary Wharf is a hideous, hideous place. Born out of the throws of 80s excess, an attempt to build a capitalist haven in a previously dilapidated area of the docklands, what we have ended up with in 2011 is a soul-less concrete shrine to banking, populated by American Psycho types in smart suits and neat haircuts - it's an area with as much character as a breeze block. Worse than this though, from my perspective, is the choice of places to eat and drink. All Bar One, Pizza Express, Slug & Lettuce, EAT, Pret, GBK, this tedious line-up of dreadful high-street chains turns an already depressing area into one to actively avoid, and avoid it I most actively do.
In the context of this location, then, Camino is not a bad restaurant at all. They cook proper Spanish food in an attractive room with wonderful views of the river, and the staff are as cheery and enthusiastic as you could hope for from people forced to spend their working days and nights in Canary Wharf. And although the food was hit and miss, I can see how you could enjoy an evening here, if only because the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate. Apologies for the flash photography in this post, but it was so dark nothing would have come out otherwise, and as we were the only diners in the restaurant for 90% of our meal last night I don't think we were annoying too many people. We started with Anchoas con pimientos, anchovies with sweet peppers in a sherry sauce.
I liked the bold flavours in this dish - the peppers were incredibly sweet and slimy, the anchovies salty and some sliced spring onions provided crunch. It wasn't a vast amount of food for nearly £6 perhaps but good anchovies aren't cheap and these at least were of decent quality.
Grilled octopus tentacle was very good - a single huge, meaty tentacle coiled around a blob of decent mashed potato and seasoned with a generous sprinkling of paprika. The grill had been used to good effect to get the outside of the octopus nice and crispy and the flesh inside was firm without being chewy.
Chipirones were less successful. The squid bits themselves were nice and moist, but although the batter was crunchy it was a little thick and overwhelmed the seafood. And the aioli wasn't very nice at all - bright white and synthetic, with no real hit of fresh garlic, I don't know for sure whether Camino make their garlic mayo in house but it didn't taste like they did.
And so to the main event, and the reason I'd been invited to Camino in the first place, a huge 32oz rib-eye on the bone. It certainly looks the part, doesn't it? Beautifully charred on the outside, confidently rare inside (we'd asked for medium rare but allowed them this because this would count as medium rare in Spain) and served sliced into neat strips, the only fault you could pick with the presentation was the tiny wooden tray it was served on, which had no area to catch the juices from the beef and so just dripped greasy beef fat all over the table over the course of the evening. Someone at Camino really knows how to grill beef, though, as in terms of seasoning and timing you couldn't fault this at all. Unfortunately, what did let it down was the quality of the beef itself which had hardly any flavour and a strange greasy texture making eating it all a bit of a chore. At £45 for two people, it would be a reasonable price to pay for such a lot of meat but only if it actually tasted of anything. There was, even more strangely, no smell either - none of that wonderful metallic, meaty aroma which hangs in the air in places like Hawksmoor or Goodman. Call me a beef snob if you like (guilty, I imagine) but if you grill beef this well and it still tastes like plastic it all points towards problems with your supplier; if Camino ever got hold of some decent cow they'd be on to a real winner.
With a bottle of very nice Descendientes de José Palacios Bierzo Pétalos 2008 for £30 ish (I know, check me out talking about wine - it was a really good one this though, fruity and rich and a perfect steak accompaniment) it came to £50 a head, which is actually fairly decent considering the view and surroundings, and would have been something approaching a bargain had that steak been any good. And service was brilliant - attentive, friendly, flexible when we couldn't make our mind up between a couple of dishes and not afraid to suggest alternatives. But I'm afraid the over-riding memories I will have of my meal won't be the tender octopus tentacle or the lovely wine, it will be that flavourless beef and the desolate, windswept journey to reach it. It would have to be a very special restaurant indeed to tempt me back to this part of town for my dinner, and I'm afraid I will have to leave Camino to the Patrick Batemans and Gordon Geckos of Canary Wharf.
6/10
I was invited to review Camino
It must be very, very hard work opening a restaurant like Salt House in Liverpool. I have no doubt it's very hard work opening any kind of restaurant anywhere, and quite frankly having heard some stories from traumatised restaurateurs I can't believe anyone would voluntarily choose to make their living this way, but new places outside London must have their own particular extra set of challenges. Were it in London, Salt House would do very well, serving largely authentic (whatever that means these days), technically impressive Spanish tapas using fresh ingredients and matched with decent Spanish wines, and its existence (and continued success) would be something the owners should be proud of. To perform the same feat in Liverpool, a city which only recently got its first Wagamamas and where the population are, without wanting to sound patronising, not quite as cosmopolitan as diners from the capital, is an achievement to be cherished.
I hesitate to make any wild generalisations about Liverpool diners, and God knows they have a better choice of places to eat than most other areas of the North West (good luck trying to find somewhere even half decent in Manchester), but there was something in the way our Spanish waiter nervously described the menu to us - "tapas dishes are only quite small so I suggest you order three per person" - and his response when we selected a £14 tray of Iberico ham - "it's just sliced ham, it doesn't come with any sides" - that suggested the reaction of the public to this menu, priced very much at the "reasonable" end of what you might expect to pay in London but fairly ambitious for Liverpool, has not always been understanding. Which is a shame, because as far as the food is concerned, Salt House really shouldn't have anything to be nervous about at all.
Some good artisan sourdough (from a local bakery I believe) began proceedings, and was shortly followed by a small dish of plump, perfectly cooked prawns in garlic oil and some impressively tender (if slightly greasy) calamari with decent aioli. With tapas restaurants more than almost any other you can tell how a meal is going to go after a couple of mouthfuls of the first dishes, and these got events off to a very promising start. And from here on, up to a point, things just kept getting better.
Morcilla with apples and sage was just brilliant - the pudding soft and piggy and topped with a couple of dainty, crunchy onion rings for texture; it disappeared in seconds. With this came four piping hot Iberico ham croquettas, whose breadcrumbed surface contained a rich, salty béchamel mixture as good as I've ever had in Spain. They were absolutely massive for £5.50, too.
Instead of trying to cook a perfectly moist pork belly and get a good crackling in the same piece of meat, I will forgive the Salt House for cheating slightly by cooking the main flesh sous-vide (presumably) and placing a crunchy bit of crackling prepared separately on top. And I forgive them because the results were so spectacular - an unbelievably tender pork belly, as light as a soufflé, in a delicate quince and chorizo glaze that made the whole thing a joy to consume. Perfect.
I don't like people messing about with my cheese courses, and I would have been quite happy if the advertised Picos de Europa, Manchego and Monte Enebro came simply sliced on a tray, perhaps with some quince membrillo if you insist. Unfortunately the fussy presentation detracted from what are usually three top quality cheeses, particularly the Monte Enebro which if I didn't know better had morphed into a completely different goat's cheese altogether... I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as we didn't complain and I didn't see the pre-messed-about-with article, but it certainly didn't look or taste like any Monte Enebro I've ever tried. Oh well.
Fortunately desserts put events back on track. A turron caramel mousse contained generous large chunks of turron in a light and tasty mousse, and an Oloroso trifle was pleasingly alcoholic with a good soft jelly. I should also mention the glass of Pedro Ximinez we had with these, which I enjoyed so much I came back into town the next day to try and find a bottle for myself; whether the one I in fact ended up with (from Lunya's deli, just up the road) was the same I'm not sure, but here's hoping.
So apart from that weird cheese course, I enjoyed everything about the Salt House. The service coped with our requests for a particular table (we hadn't booked) and me changing my mind about whether to order a glass of wine or a bottle (no prizes which option won) with good grace and the flow of all the dishes felt relaxed and comfortable all evening. It's a nice, tastefully-decorated split-level room which never got too noisy despite the presence of a couple of large tables of merry tourists, and even the toilets, two flights down and seemingly carved out of bare rock in the very bowels of the earth, were clean and spacious. I have a feeling we have the trailblazing Lunya to thank for this unapologetically Spanish meal, who presumably found suppliers and tested the Liverpudlian waters with premium acorn-fed hams and dry sherries a few months before the Salt House did their own thing. But in the end, the real winners are us - where Lunya felt unsure and unpolished, the Salt House was assured and technically polished. The Iberico ham I'd had in Lunya last year, although tasting as good as ever, was sliced badly and pointlessly dressed with pickled figs as if in apology for having to charge you so much for "just sliced ham". Here, it was wafer thin, glistening with fat and presented in neat slivers on a plain wooden board. And if there's one thing in the world guaranteed to make me feel good about a restaurant, it's a glass of Spanish sherry and a board of neat slivers of Iberico ham. I will be back.
8/10
