Where: Morito, Farringdon
With who: The Ginger Prince
How much: £35 a head for 8 shared plates, with a glass of fino each (slightly spoilt by remembrance of Jose's Manzilla) and a carafe of decent if forgettable house red.
Come here if: you're too old for Shoreditch, but want to sit on the street eating tapas watching hipsters cycle by.
The concept of the post beer bite definitely changes as you get older. I remember the days, particularly with the Ginger Prince, when a dirty kebab or a curry take out from Tooting High Road's finest were the best we could hope for after a night on the ales.
Civilisation is a wonderful thing. A couple of artisan pale ales in Farringdon's recently opened Craft Beer Co. started off the evening, followed by a stroll along Exmouth Market and a sherry while waiting for a space to open up at reservation free Morito.**
I'm a sucker for small sharing foods, helping me avoid 'other people's dinner envy' for a fraction of the price of a tasting menu. Even though we don't have the culture to support lanes of tiny little tapas bars here, there are enough decent places where you can shovel down plates of Spanish influenced nibbles.
Unlike bigger and slightly more upmarket neigbour Moro (the one your parents will really approve of) there are no reservations at the orange formica clad bar, where sharp elbowed trendies joust with local suits for space to pile their terracotta plates and baskets of fresh soft roundels and densely spiced flat breads made in Moro's bakery next door.
The bread is essential. Warm if you're lucky, moreish either way. It soaks up the fresh olive oil bottled on each table and its soft, open structure is perfect for scooping up little piles of za'atar (a piquant Arab herb mix on the table with the salt). The za'tar is a giveaway that this isn't a typical tapas bar, but one heavily influenced by Spain's Southern and Middle Eastern neighbours.
We started with one of the most remote of these influences, a soft, silken, oil infused Iranian Borani. Pureed beetroot with feta, dill and walnut was a perfect accompaniment to the breads and vanished swiftly with another Moorish dish of soft spiced lamb mince served on creamy roast aubergine. Lest there was no crunch to the meal, we sampled salt cod croquettas, soft fish yielding under a buttery breadcrumb carapace so good we followed it almost instantly with another plate, this time of jamon and chicken, a little too mushy inside but forgivably so. I was less forgiving of a dish of Butifarra sausage. Four thin discs drowning in an over oily mass of soft white beans, oddly tepid and served with a splodge of garlicky aioli.
I can never resist pimientos de Padrón when they appear on a menu, here a good value £3.50, hot, flame charred and oiled like tiny green Lucha Libre wrestlers, the rare 'Hot One' threatening to kick your throat in. No luck tonight, though they provided a sharp salty contrast to a menu a little steeped in oil and cream. A final hurrah came with a small wooden platter of crisp baby squid. We realised half way through that they were whole, inch long tubes of fried fry or battered baby. Either way it felt like piscine infanticide on an epic scale.
Busy and buzzy even at 9.30 on a Tuesday night there was a wait, this really is somewhere you stumble into rather than a planned 'eat at eight' mission. If you want that, go to the slightly more upscale Moro next door. Just make sure you eat well enough to drown out any envy of the snake hipped youth hanging outside.
** My 15 year old self just re-read that line and cried big tears.
I love it here. And agreed on too old for Shoreditch!
ReplyDeleteA most enjoyable evening it was. Can't argue with you on the food, but a couple of comments on the drinks:
ReplyDelete"Artisan pale ales": the word 'artisan' makes me shudder.
"A carafe of forgettable house red": bang on. The place has the set-up of an Andalusian Cafe - all formica and whiteboard menus. It's a study in anti-style - although the studied bit of course makes it contradictorily stylish. But this is what their 'brand' is built on, and the point is that the fact that there is only a choice of three serviceable if forgettable reds is exactly on 'brand' for this place. I for one wouldn't want it any other way - a long, expensive wine list would be distracting from what is a quick, noisy, busy, social event.