Boceto, 29th July

With Boceto, the guys behind Three Eight Four and Seven at Brixton have made the schlep North of the river to Mare Street, an ideal location for their kind of thing. Having been to Three Eight Four and quite liking it, I expected to like Boceto too. It has more of a food focus then 384 but some interesting drinks too.

And I did like it, in general. Unfortunately it was rather marred by having the worst tortilla my little mouth has ever endured. It was so so dry, clearly had been sitting out all day. Not one little ounce of moisture in it and very little flavour. Seasoning was AWOL. 

On the other hand, the lamb that I had was pink and tender and the steak my date had was the same, with a yummy chimichurri sauce that was just the right amount of in your face with its heat (though too much for my companion - what a wuss!).

The pan con tomate was absolutely loaded with 'tomate' and was a pretty filling accompaniment.

With a slight twisting of my arm I decided to have dessert and of course had to try the churros as they were in keeping with the Spanish theme. I’m no churros expert but these were… alright I guess. Didn’t have me professing any great love for them.

As I was with someone who doesn’t drink, I limited myself to just the one cocktail – Mother’s Ruin, which had been imported from their Seven branch. Quite fun to pour yourself and a light and summery drink.

The place has a really casual vibe and I’d be happy to pop in for a drink again but probably wouldn’t bother too much with the food. 

Barrafina, 8th October

I am not going to write anything bad about Barrafina. There is nothing bad to say about Barrafina. General consensus is that the food at Barrafina is good and general consensus is right. But how good? Well, for me, just pleasantly good, not knock-your-socks-off good. I enjoyed everything I ate and the meal itself was a very pleasurable experience. Even the hour’s wait for a table passed by quite quickly as we started on a bottle of red and got some padron peppers and bread to keep us company. For the first time ever I think I actually found a spicy one!

The meal was on Stephen and he was feeling lavish so we ordered quite a lot. It was very hard to choose between the ‘classics’ that are on the menu all the time and the specials of the night so we did a bit of both. We couldn’t miss out on the ham croquetas or one of the tortillas – prawn and piquillo pepper. I thought the tortilla was spot on – just the right squishy consistency in the middle but not too undercooked for my liking. The croquetas were good but I have to say I prefer the ones Stephen has made at home himself!

Milk-fed lamb belly was a no-brainer and of course if you’re going to eat in a Spanish place, you have to have chorizo (served with potatoes and watercress). Stephen had fried red mullet all to himself and I shared the arroz negro with monkfish with him, and first to come out was the meat platter we ordered. This was very nice but we immediately had food envy when we saw someone else’s choice of, I think, thin slices of lomo. Perhaps going for one specific type of cured meat is the way forward.

I can’t comment on the red mullet, although the saffron sauce it came with was a delight. The arroz negro was an incredibly deep-flavoured dish – too deeply flavoured for the monkfish in fact I think – it rather got lost amongst all that squid ink. A little more of it wouldn't have gone amiss either. 

The lamb – tender and one of those dishes you wish you hadn’t shared. Although by this time I was pretty stuffed so didn’t mind so much. While I enjoyed the chorizo, I was a little underwhelmed by this dish and the way it was presented - it was a tad boring and not the most enjoyable chorizo I've ever had. 

We still, for some reason, decided to get a dessert (shared of course) which was a chocolate tart with an sort of dry, but intensely chocolatey texture. Completely unnecessary but very good. 

It was a really enjoyable meal. And the food was all very decent – more than decent but I just don’t know if I can get that excited about classic Spanish tapas.

Portside Parlour, 23rd January

There aren’t too many places left in Shoreditch that I feel I need to visit (though new places do keep opening, witness: The New Philosopher from the Manero’s crew). Friday night I crossed two of the remaining four (now five!) off my list – Portside Parlour, their relatively new permanent place, and Lounge Bohemia which has been there a while.

I went to Portside Parlour when they were but a pop-up on Broadway Market. Small and dark with a naval flavour, I really liked the place and was keen to see how they’d do with bigger permanent digs. They still have a lot of rum and a well-crafted cocktail list, and maritime overtones, but now they have a tapas menu of food which is worth visiting for on its own. In fact, due to their license, you have to have at least something to eat if you want to drink. But this is no hardship.

Stephen is off the meat for the month and so he had the two fish dishes – cod cheeks and octopus. I had the pork belly with caperberry vinaigrette and chicken pastries with a sweet and sour style dip.

Stephen was completely enamoured with his octopus. He even called it a revelation, and he does not bandy about hyperbole lightly. It was cut into chunks which rather disguised what it was, and it looked very meaty. I didn’t try it but Stephen said it had this fantastic crispy outside, a great texture and flavour. I wish I’d given it a go!

The cod cheeks were also really nice, Stephen joked about ordering some more once he had done. These I did try. They came with a salsa verde and were in croquette form, a good crunch on the outside with the lovely light flesh in the middle.

My dishes were less adventurous and p’raps because of this, a little less satisfying. The chicken pastries were a bit like thin spring rolls with not that much chicken in them, and the dip wasn’t very exciting. However, the pork belly was delicious (when is it not?) I enjoyed the sweet puree it came with in its own right, and the pig was not too fatty and crisp on the top. The vinaigrette was lovely but they really need to rethink how they serve this. As the plate was placed all the vinaigrette kept running off – onto Stephen’s shirt,  and onto our legs when we moved it. It needs a plate with a lip!

The lighting was low and we were sat at the bar which was uneven, meaning taking photos of the food was tricky. I apologise for the poor quality. They do not do the food justice.

All the cocktails sounded great, and we both really liked what we ordered. My favourite was the Micah 4:4 – cognac, fig, honey and sherry, it was heady, sweet and strong. Perfect. To follow I had the Emigre which was like an adult float, what with the fruity calvados and rum base and egg white adding the foam. It was really good but couldn’t match the Micah 4:4.

Stephen had wanted the calamartini which is flavoured with squid ink but that wasn’t available so he had to make do with an Into the Woods. Portside Parlour have a very cool gadget which I suspect they love to play with  - it got a lot of use when we were there – it infused smoke into alcohol. It was used to make this drink – a smoky take on a maple old fashioned, imbued with cedarwood bitters and the smoke from applewood. And now I have to confess I can’t remember what he had for his second drink – the Autopilot or the 5 o’Clock somewhere. Again, very good but perhaps not as much of a wow as the first drink.

Handy tip – be inquisitive, just because you see two pages of drinks, doesn’t mean there isn’t a third one lurking overleaf. Stephen was quite surprised when I started saying I might have the Émigré and he couldn’t spot it on the list anywhere. Crafty, these pages - you never know when there might be another one just the other side.

We really enjoyed the place and were tempted to stay longer but we had an appointment at Lounge Bohemia we had to keep…

Opera Tavern, 13th February

My boyfriend and I are developing a few of our own Valentine's Day traditions. Firstly, we stopped celebrating it on Valentine's Day and instead do it the day before (or after) so that if we want to go to a restaurant we aren't forced into choosing from a special Valentine's Menu and the place isn't full of sickening couples. Secondly, we seem to end up at slightly weird places (last year - Naked Girls Reading, the year before, a war memorial). And thirdly, my boyfriend buys 'me' some chocolate from Paul A Young (which he gets to share of course).

This year we took the day off and went for lunch at the Opera Tavern for the first part of our celebrations and then went to the Romantic Misadventures event in the evening (see next post about that).

Opera Tavern is run by the same people who own Salt Yard (and Dehesa, and their new one Ember Yard). We'd been to Salt Yard for my birthday a few years ago and loved it so we thought we should try one of the other ones. 

Salt Yard is a basement restaurant, with a bar for drinking and charcuterie upstairs, whereas Opera Tavern has its bar on ground level and the restaurant upstairs. Which makes for quite a bright and airy room, not quite the romantic cavern we had imagined. The romance was dialled down another notch by the room being mainly occupied by parties of six or more, and so was rather boisterous. Oh well - our own folly for bucking the V-day trend.

First things first - a portion of fluffy, chargrilled bread with a mild, light olive oil was lovely, and the bread was good enough on its own without the oil. Next up came the smoke haddock croquettes with saffron aioli. That aioli was not taking any prisoners with its full-on garlic taste. The haddock croquettes were creamy and fishy, but not overpoweringly so - very happy with those. 

One of the differences between Salt Yard and Opera Tavern is Opera Tavern's grilled selections, so we made sure to choose something from that section. While the food was lovely on the whole, it was probably the grilled dishes that weren't quite as fantastic as they might have been. We ordered a beef and beetroot and a lamb neck and pear skewer and while they were tasty, they weren't quite as juicy or moreish as I thought they might be. There wasn't as much pear on the lamb skewer as I'd hoped – I thought there would be chunks of it cooked on the skewer – and there could have been more of the pomegranate sticky sauce the beef came with.

Another thing that marks out Opera Tavern from its sister restaurants is the focus on iberico pork, which they serve as a burger instead of just in jamon form. Taking advantage of this and the charcoal grill, we ordered the pork and fois gras burger. This didn't quite live up to its expectations on Stephen's behalf, but I really liked it. He thinks this is because I don't partake of the full joy a beef burger can give you but I thought the flavour was lovely, even if I was a little taken aback by the very pink middle at first. I liked the crispy onion and the sweet, charred bun, but must admit, didn't discern the fois gras making much of a difference to the porky taste. Stephen thought that it being served rare did its texture no favours and also lead to a lack of taste. I agree that I thought the firmer edges of the burger were the better parts.

We then had a salad of ndjuja, honey parsnips and quail's eggs, and bavette with braised onions and trevise. The steak was my favourite dish - the bavette being incredibly tender and full of flavour and slow cooked onions pretty much always steal my heart. But the nduja salad put up a pretty good fight - the quail's eggs were perfectly cooked, the parsnips were sweet and the nduja was spicy, with some nice peppery and robust greens to make up the salad part. The spicy chorizo-like oil did a good job of making us feel like we weren't eating anything too healthy for our celebratory meal.

The only real disappointment on the savoury front was the monkfish with orzo and mussels which had a sauce which was a little too bitter for both of our taste buds. Whether this was the sea purslane effect or the choricera pepper I don't know. 

We weren't sure if we really needed dessert but two interesting ones caught our eye and we caved. I had the rhubarb with italian meringue and shortbread while Stephen had the blood orange tart. By gum were they good. Mine was like eating a thick eton mess (but without berries for once) - the shortbread was sprinkled on top, pieces of stewed rhubarb were laden on top and there were lovely chewy bits to the meringue, as well as a sweet rhubarb sauce. Stephen's tart was just that, with a lovely blood orange marmalade and caremelised pistachios. 

I enjoyed my meal at Opera Tavern - the food was accomplished, interesting, and mostly tasty. Stephen had a couple of Alhambra beers with his meal, which he very much liked and I had a very tasty brindisi reserva - a full-bodied red. I think I preferred the cosy intimacy of Salt Yard but allow that it might be purely down to the time of day we visited. However, despite having a lovely lunch, if I would return to one it would be Salt Yard, and I would try one of the others in the group before going here again. 

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Mockingbird, 22nd September

Sometimes what you need as a pick-me-up to combat the Sunday blues is tapas and cocktails. Which is exactly what Mockingbird provides. Having not seen my best friend for a little over a week (we consider that a long time now she's in London) a catch up provided the perfect excuse to indulge a little on a Sunday.

We had an early dinner so got to Mockingbird at about 5:30. There were a few people inside and all of the outside seats were taken but it was far from busy. As we perused the menu, mouths salivating and eyes opening in joy at the many references to bread, we found it hard to narrow it down. We decided to pick a couple of dishes to start with and then add to that if we needed any more.

So first, probably my two favourite dishes - bifinhos and tortilla. The tortilla was a basic Spanish omelette with potatoes and onions. The bifinhos were slices of beef on bageutte topped with melting brie and a padron pepper, and drizzled with oil. A simple dish but really enjoyable to eat. Likewise the tortilla, which was a really good sized for sharing. All the dishes in fact were large enough to be shared without feeling gypped - we only ordered four dishes between the two of us in the end but I felt more than full. Makes a nice change from eating in 'small plates' restaurants and still feeling hungry but not wanting to order any more because of the prohibitive cost.

Our second two dishes were the croquetas con pollo and the langostinas. Both came with aioli (which could have been a little more garlicky in my opinion). The prawns came skewered together and peeled garnished with (which is what drew us to the dish) grated egg! It worked rather well but after having two or three of them I realised my allergy was kicking in and I had to give the rest to my friend in exchange for more balls. It's always good to have more balls. These were quite dense balls of shredded chicken, and with the addition of some salsa that we requested, a pretty tasty snack.

We accompanied our dinner with a couple of glasses of white wine, but decided that for 'dessert' we should have a cocktail. Most of them are very reasonably priced between 5 and 7 pounds, cover the expected mojitos and sangria but with a few more interesting concoctions such as the Micelada that I had and the Santiago which Alison had. The Micelada is a beer based cocktail (that's the second I've had recently after Dead Dolls House!). It's like a bloody mary but with beer instead of vodka - so it has tomato juice, lime, some spices and hot sauce. It was very peppery. If beer always tasted like this, I'd be a convert.

Alison's Santiago had a reassuringly bourbon taste to it that was lifted and sweetened by the cranberry juice, cucumber and grapefruit juice. It was very refreshing without being too much like lemonade.

Mockingbird may not have provided culinary fireworks but it did provide solid, filling good cooking for reasonable prices. I'd happily go back. I caught a glimpse of the homemade nachos which looked reassuringly fried!

Three drinks meant we weren't in the mood to go home so we headed off to the Ridley Road Market Bar where we were offered a taster of their well-priced wine before ordering a carafe, and finished off the night with a £5 mojito each. It's such a cute, quirky little bar - with its Hawaiian/tropical feel you wouldn't expect to find it tucked past all the smelly fishmongers!

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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!

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