Morito, 1st December

Stephen has been to Morito so often that I almost felt like I'd been myself. He always speaks highly of it and I have been pestering him to go with me for a while. That day finally came when we decided to celebrate our anniversary with a lunch there.

Morito does little plates with a Moorish feel to them. Prices range from 2.50 for an assortment of breads up to about 8.50 for some lamb chops. The place is very fond of cumin.

Because Stephen has been there so often and done the hard work for me, by trying most of the dishes on the menu, I turned to him to lead on the choices and I was pretty much guaranteed that each one was going to be a winner. And they were all good.

I had a carafe of full bodied, syrupy syrah with my meal, although Stephen had a few glasses of this as well as his medium beer. We ordered the bread basket to start - a dense, chewy roll each, a large cumin dusted flatbread to share and some breadstick nibs. The breadstick nibs seemed a bit pointless, not really having anything to dip them in, although I did discover you could roll them in some oil and then roll them in the spices you get on the table, which made them quite nice. The other two breads were delicious and I should have saved more of mine to soak up the extraneous oils, juices and aioli from our little dishes.

You can order as many as you like at a time and they all sort of come out haphazardly. The first to come was the scallop dish with sherry vinegar and butter sauce. One plump scallop which had been sliced neatly in three. 

We then had the jamon croquetas - perfectly crispy on the outside while being soft and creamy inside. And no scrimping on the jamon either.

The lamb chops with cumin and paprika were tasty and once again had me bemoaning that you get so little meat on them. They weren't quite as good as the ones I had in The Painted Heron, and were maybe a tad underdone near the bone. Which was funny in a way, as Stephen had said that the last time he had them, they'd been a little overdone. So I guess consistency on the lamb chops isn't their strong point.

The butifarra sausae with white beans and alioli was a lovely salty, meaty, and slightly stodgy dish. Both the sausage and the lamb chops provided plenty of extra oil, and a bit of alioli to get that bread out and make sure none of it went to waste.

 I think I spot some cumin!

We knew we wanted to end with the grilled tetilla cheese with walnuts and membrillo but we also splurged and ordered one other dish as well with that - the chicharrones. I am so glad we got these - I think they were my favourite dish. Cubes of pork belly in cumin (again!) and lemon. The pork was crispy around the edges but soft and tender in the middle, and I loved the lemony tang.

As we were finishing off with the cheese - the sweet quince bringing out the slightly sweet flavour in the cheese, we had a couple of 'digestifs' to end the meal with. I ordered an amontillado sherry, my first ever sherry, and Stephen had a negroni. That slightly melted tetilla cheese was wonderful, another highlight. I loved the sort of crust on the edge where it had been grilled and then the oozy middle to scoop out and sprinkle with walnuts.

Squidgy, cheesy goodness

I enjoyed my sherry more than I had actually expected. It was much more like a strong wine, quite dry - I think I might now be a sherry drinker! But then I knew that Morito/Moro was a good place to start.

Cheers!

Find the menu & restaurant information on Zomato

Feast, 4th August

I was so determined to go to Feast that I bought two sets of tickets – one for Saturday and one for Sunday, in case I was too hungover to make it down there on Saturday.

Happily, after an extended slumber, I felt fairly normal, and couldn’t think of a better way to cope with hangover munchies than heading down to a festival of food. Feast was an event coordinated by the same people behind the Long Table in Dalston last year, which I didn’t get to. This time they were bringing together 30 purveyors of food and drink – both street food, and established restaurants, selling their wares. It was a bit like Taste London but with a DJ, more of a festival feel, and less expensive: entry was a mere £6 in advance.

We got there at about 7:30 and spent a good two hours there, browsing the stalls and sharing a few dishes between us, grabbing a drink every now and then to let ourselves digest and make room for more! The weather was luckily very balmy (it was an outdoor event in Guy’s Quadrangle) and the DJ was pretty good – he seemed to be playing all the songs I have on my Spotify playlists.

And so, to the food. Apologies for the lack of photos. I once again forgot at first, and then by the time I remembered it was too dark for my crappy phone.

I straight away went for a dish of spiced lamb, hoummus and chilli butter from Morito. I haven’t yet eaten at Morito, though my boyfriend has several times, so I was pleased to be able to sample their food. This was really good, though perhaps a tad oily, and they let you have as much bread with it as you wanted. For £2.50! I was really impressed with the pricing of all the dishes. The only thing that we thought was maybe a little too expensive were the burgers. The Hawksmoor burgers were going for £9.00, which is probably good value for anything from Hawksmoor, but was the most expensive dish there. The Patty and Bun cheeseburgers with bacon were £7.00 which seemed just that pound too costly. Everything else was around a fiver, or £2.50-£3.00 for smaller dishes. Even the cocktails were £5.00 – very conducive to trying lots of different things.

So, we shared a Patty and Bun burger, which made the cost more bearable. I am not a fan of burgers in general and even though this one didn’t quite convince me, it seemed good as far as burgers go! It had pickled onions, and some ‘P & B’ smoky mayo and I thought those flavour combinations were very good. Stephen’s verdict was that it was nice but the meat wasn’t as steaky as some other burgers he’s had.

I had had a craving for a Yum Bun the day before but they weren’t at Eat Street, so I took advantage of their presence here to have one and to introduce Stephen to them. Mine was as good as I remembered, and Stephen thought the Yum Bun was the best dish of the day. Our next favourite were the tacos from L.A. Sueno, a street food vendor I hadn’t tried before. We had two beef tacos and one pork. I thought the tortilla tacos were good – had a nice flavour to them and not too dry and the beef was delicious. However, the fuego salsa could have done with a bit more ‘fuego’. Didn't even make my nose run!

The only bum note of the day was our last dish, which was ceviche from The Last Days of Pisco. We both thought the leche de tigre that they marinate the fish in was overpoweringly limey. I got one faint taste of fish in my first bite and the rest was lime, lime and more lime. I actually really like lime, but I also like the other things that were supposed to be in the dish so it was a shame not to be able to taste them. Also, there was so much lime that it felt like I had acid burn in my mouth. Not pleasant.

With a couple of pleasing drinks – a spiced cider from the main bar, and then a very impressive rose and raspberry cocktail from the Hendrick’s bar (which mostly tasted of lychee but which I liked all the better for it) we had, I would say, a very impressive roster of consumption. I didn’t feel I could fit any more in, which was a shame as I had my eye on the Bread Street Kitchen chicken wings, and Platform’s pigs’ cheeks with chorizo also sounded very tempting. We mooted the idea of going back the next day, but the weather and feelings of guilt at over indulgence the previous two days prevented us.

Feast is over for now, but if they do something else, I’ll make sure to try it.