Cheese of the Month - Berkswell from Neal's Yard Dairy

I will only ever buy cheese I know I'm going to like. If this seems like a rather obvious statement, just think of the number of things you regularly consume that you have little or no idea if you're going to enjoy - books, movies, plays; you can read a handful of reviews and make an educated guess, but really, once the money is handed over and you've taken your seat, whether you will consider the transaction worthwhile once the metaphorical fat lady sings is anyone's guess. Restaurants, too - believe it or not, I don't (with one notable exception) deliberately seek out terrible places just because it makes good copy; it's my money and my time, and my desire to have an enjoyable evening vastly outweighs any self-righteous catharsis gained from a negative review.

But cheese - ah, cheese is different. If you find yourself a good cheese shop then all the risk and uncertainty is removed, and your purchasing experience is satisfying, stress-free and enjoyable. Sadly, at certain cheese shops in the capital my experience hasn't always been thus, and on more than one occasion I've felt pressured into buying more than I needed or made to feel like an inconvenience for asking to try more than one type of Stilton. At Neal's Yard, though, you won't get any of that. Staff are so pleasant and helpful you just feel like spending all day working your way through the vast collection of British and Irish cheeses, each handily labelled - a favourite hobbyhorse of mine - with a short bio of the cheese including whether they are made with pasteurised or unpasteurised milk. If I sound like a paid shill for Neal's Yard, and I can understand that with all the freebies floating around these days, then I can only assure you I'm not. As the old saying goes, the best products make salesmen of us all.


Of the haul of superb cheeses I came away with from Neal's Yard, I'm going to focus on Berkswell, an unpasteurised sheep's milk cheese from - of all places - the West Midlands. I'm not sure if it's an insult to our native cheesemongers say that it doesn't really taste like an English cheese at all - dense and salty, with a good crusty rind and deep nutty flavour, it brings to mind a fine Manchego (also sheep's milk) or soft aged Parmesan (at least in texture). At £36 a kilo, too, you'd hope it would be good - even the artisan Stichelton is only £27 a kilo - but for quality like this the price seems very reasonable, and the gorgeous grassy, "farmy" notes from the unpasteurised milk, as well as the complex musty aroma from the rind make a complex and hugely enjoyable result. The slightly unusual shape of the whole truckle, by the way, is because the cheese is formed inside a plastic salad spinner - a lovely homely touch to this most lovingly crafted of products.


I'm not sure where else in London stocks Berkswell - there's not much on Google so perhaps Neal's Yard is the only supplier after all - but if you live anywhere within travelling distance to Covent Garden or Borough I can't recommend a visit highly enough. When shopping is as much fun as taste-testing free samples of the country's best cheeses, and you end up with a bag containing a chunk of one as good as Berkswell, battling the crowds of central London really is no hardship.

Berkswell cheese 8/10
Neal's Yard Dairy 9/10

Thanks to Neil Davey for the fascinating factoid about the salad spinner

Buen Provecho, Waterloo

In wondering just why it is that some of the street food stalls in London are so far ahead of their competitors in their relevant fields (try finding a better burger than the #meateasy bacon cheeseburger, go on, I dare you, or for that matter a better Chocolate Fudge Sundae than Choc Star's) it's tempting to conclude that certain types of cuisine just lend themselves better to this kind of arrangement than others. Small-turnover, "fast" (ish) food, heavily dependent on an individual's passion for their own chosen cuisine and with an attention to detail on ingredients and method that borders on scary, the humble burger has been transformed by the #meateasy treatment because the pace and freedom of street food allows and encourages experimentation, invention and sheer, bloody-minded obsession. Somehow, sometimes, in a restaurant environment, where the link between the chef and the customer is hidden behind fixtures and fittings and 12.5% service, that magic and passion is lost.


But this post isn't about the #meateasy. Around the back of Waterloo station, a humble taco stall is doing for Mexican street food what Yianni did for West Coast burgers, and is surely destined to be just as popular. Buen Provecho is the work of Arturo Ortega Rodriguez of Mexico City who, according to Timeout, came to London six years ago and worked briefly in a hotel before setting up his own mobile operation. Like the Meatwagon when it still existed, he moves about a bit - my friend Helen found him in Elephant and Castle, of all places - but nowadays can reliably be seen Mondays to Fridays, midday until "whenever the food runs out" on Lower Marsh St market. The small menu is displayed on a chalkboard pinned to the back of his tent, and contains what at first glance is a familiar run-through of Mexican dishes - tacos, quesadillas, nachos - all at sensible prices. I ordered a selection of 3 tacos (£6) and was told to help myself to the toppings out on display - a chunky, bright green guacamole, an onion and chilli salad, and a mysterious house salsa which Arturo sells by the jar. Before we go any further, how many times in any Mexican joint in London have you been allowed to "help yourself" to as much guacamole as you like? And instead, how many times have you been charged 50p extra on top of your stodgy £6 burrito for the privilege of having any guacamole at all? Buen Provecho were already in my good books, and that was even before I'd eaten anything.


From the left, we have, first, Adobo con carne, not-too-tender but hugely flavoursome strips of beef in a subtle smoked chilli sauce which was quite unlike anything I'd had before. I want to describe the sauce as "oaky" but this description doesn't go far enough - it was dense and woody, rich like the smell of an antique wardrobe, and coated the beef thoroughly without either being too oily or too dry. The guacamole I'd chosen to dump on top (I'd like another go at choosing toppings, I think - I can probably do better) seemingly consisted of little more than great buttery coarse chunks of avocado and a few bits of coriander, but had a greater hit of fresh lime than any other you can get in London and was utterly magnificent. Next along was Pollo con mole, moist strips of slow-cooked chicken in a great mole sauce that made me finally realise what all the fuss was about mole - faintly chocolaty, spicy and umami-rich - and topped with the tinglingly fresh house salsa, of which I won't even begin to guess the ingredients but will say I am going back for a jar of it the next chance I get.


But best of all was, on the right, the pork pibil, unbelievably tender strips of pork in a spicy orange (the fruit and the colour) sauce that was just so mind-blowingly good I actually laughed out loud, on my own, as I ate it. It's very difficult to describe why it was so brilliant without resorting to meaningless hyperbole, but there was just something about how fresh, how - bear with me - alive (in a metaphorical sense obviously) it was, and topped with a crunchy red onion and chilli salad which added texture and fire, it added up to what must be a definitive version of this famous Mexican snack. Certainly, if there's a better one out there, I'll eat my sombrero.

My only regret is that I didn't order twice as much, and in fact looking through the menu more thoroughly now I'm back on the computer I can see the 'Meal Box' option which may be a better way of getting as much of that pork pibil down my neck as possible for £6. So next time, and of course there will be a next time, very soon, I will be a bit more confident (read: greedy) with the toppings, perhaps pick up some cream of chickpea soup as a little starter, and make sure I have a long leisurely lunch hour to ensure nothing comes between me and my food. For a fraction of the price and fanfare of certain other hugely overblown restaurants in London, Buen Provecho is producing the greatest Mexican food this side of the Yucatan, and is single-handedly responsible for restoring my faith in this most poorly represented of cuisines. Go, and enjoy it while you can before history repeats itself and Meatwagon-style fame descends on Arturo Ortega Rodriguez.

9/10

Arturo can be found on Lower Marsh Street market from mid-day until "whenever the food runs out, usually 2:30-3pm", Monday to Friday. He is also available for private catering and can be reached on 07908 210311.

#meateasy bacon cheeseburger picture linked with kind permission of Ross Bruniges.

Camino, Canary Wharf

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

Silk Road, Camberwell

I am yet to find a Sichuan restaurant I don't like. I'm sure there must be bad ones out there somewhere - Chinatown might be a good place to look, God knows there are enough crappy restaurants of other kinds round those parts, but there's something about Sichuan food that seems to guarantee a certain minimum standard. I don't know why exactly that should be, though I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that the level of spicing and uncompromising use of offal in even the most basic dishes means it's impossible to do any kind of toned-down tourist-friendly version, and so anything you end up with is likely to be at the very least explosively hot, powerfully flavoured and containing parts of pig you never even knew existed. However, Silk Road, in common I believe with another of my favourite Chinese restaurants Gourmet San, is not technically strictly Sichuanese - it apparently serves the cuisine of Xinjiang, which means a bit less pork (though based on our meal last night, not actually that much less) and a bit more lamb and cumin. But all you really need to know about Silk Road is that if you have a preference for offal and, it has to be said, the constitution of an ox, you can eat superb food at prices that can only be described as a pittance.



Silk Road are rightly celebrated for their fried pork dumplings, made fresh all day and every day and often in full view of the customers at a table towards the back of the restaurant. They are brilliant - crispy on the outside, moist and piggy within - and, for the amount of backbreaking work that goes into them, ludicrously cheap, about £3 for 10. Another street-food starter is the cumin-spiced lamb skewers, charcoal grilled and moreish with the chunks of meat alternating with glistening cubes of lamb fat. We ended up ordering seconds.


I would like to say that this cabbage dish - beautifully-cooked, crunchy morsels of cabbage in a Sichuan peppercorn and chilli sauce - was one of the greatest vegetarian dishes I've ever eaten in my life. Unfortunately, as with most Sichuan restaurants, I can't be entirely sure that there wasn't some pork lurking in the mix somewhere so I will just have to tell you that it was superb regardless of how it was made.



Both lamb and spring onion and double-cooked pork were so tasty about half of each plate had disappeared down the throats of my fellow diners before I'd even unholstered my iPhone to take a picture, so rest assured they were a lot more generously proportioned when they arrived. I particuarly enjoyed the contrast between the crispy fried spring onion and the tender chunks of lamb, and the tingling but not aggressive levels of chilli heat in the pork.


Aggressive is, however, the best way of describing the fierceness of this hot cabbage dish, of which barely a mouthful had me desperately downing the rest of my Tsingtao. Despite the eye-watering chilli, however, it was still supremely flavoursome, vinegar providing a nice acid counterpoint to the vegetable.


The centerpiece of the meal was this huge bowl of vegetable-chilli broth in which chunks of potato and chicken were slowly poaching. After we had cleared sufficient space in the bowl by snaffling down the chicken and potato, a waiter brought out a generous serving of thick "belt" noodles which soaked up the rest of the sauce and made a filling and enjoyable second course out of the same dish.


Our bill came to around £20 a head, about half of which went on far more beers than is probably healthy, and I'm pretty certain that you could eat a feast here for just over a tenner - for food of this standard, little short of miraculous. In fact, it's so cheap I found myself wondering if the guys behind Silk Road shouldn't just charge a bit more and live a little - there surely can't be anyone in London who wouldn't pay 40p a dumpling instead of 30p, or slightly over retail for a Tsingtao. But who are we to complain - for anyone that ever moaned about eating out in London being an exercise in how much a restaurant can fleece you before you got out of the door, Silk Road stands as a beautiful rebuttal; a charming, big-hearted place where the food comes first and the prices are guilt-inducingly low. A gem.

9/10

Lupita, Charing Cross

It has become an accepted fact, repeated almost to the point of cliché, that London does not do good Mexican food. And this is very strange, because not only are there a huge number of Mexican restaurants in the capital - at least 80 according to London Eating - but not all of them are terrible. Admittedly, most of them are; it must say something that two of the worst meals I had last year, at the trashy and way too expensive Cantina Laredo and the utterly diabolical Tlalocan were both at Mexican restaurants, and I can't honestly say I'm dying to try out the Leicester Square branch of Chiquito or, based on the reviews, spend an evening in Desperados in Greenwich. But I enjoyed my meal at Wahaca far more than the sub-£15 a head price tag would suggest, and I'm also very partial to a loose-meat beef taco from Daddy Donkey's stall on Leather Lane. I would hesitate to dismiss the idea of any high-end or "gourmet" Mexican, as I'd like to think every world cuisine deserves a chance to get "poshed up", but perhaps the secret of Mexican food in London is to keep it simple.

Into this hardly saturated marketplace, then, steps Lupita. Tucked away around the back of Charing Cross station, it's a tastefully if minimalistically decorated restaurant hung heavy with the smell of charcoal-grilled meat. And being the world's biggest fan of the smell of charcoal-grilled meat, I was therefore put in exactly the right frame of mind to enjoy what had been billed as a Mexican "with a difference". No Tex-Mex rubbish, this, I was promised, but fresh and unusual (for here at least) ingredients and interesting dishes that showcased just the kind of food that us poor deprived Londoners had been missing out on all of these years. I was hungry, and excited. And then - barely a minute or two after we'd ordered it - the food arrived.


Worried at first we'd ordered too many dishes, it was relief touched with a note of disappointment to discover just how small some of them were. And that they were small wouldn't itself have been too much of an issue had many of them tasted of much. We had three different types of tacos, a sweet and surprisingly bland one for something containing both pork and bacon; a lukewarm underseasoned vegetarian one that contained slithery slugs of nopales (cactus); and one consisting of small chunks of bland beef which was billed as having been marinated in "our own special recipe" but didn't taste of anything much more than plain grilled beef. Expecting a bit more fire and zing and wondering whether we were just expected to provide our own seasoning with the supplied sauces, it was even more disappointing to discover that even the 'hot chilli' sauce that our waitress had gone so far as to warn us about ("it's very hot, be careful") was so bland we could quite easily eat big oily spoonfuls of it on its own. Also, I'll give Lupita the benefit of the doubt and assume that the fragile and overwhelmingly powerful (that masa flour really has an extraordinary strong flavour) taco casings are authentically Mexican, but it doesn't mean I have to like them.


Huitlacoche quesadilla was reasonably interesting - mushroomy and thick and black like vegetarian squid ink. But it again was underseasoned and I think describing it as the "Mexican truffle" is overstating it somewhat - it was, all said, a mushroom quesadilla, not unpleasant but hardly earth-shattering. And chiles y vegetales was just cold, slimy vegetables, resembling old ratatouille, topped with pickled jalapenos. In fairness, the jalapenos were nice and, unlike everything else on the table, surprisingly fiery, so at least we got our chilli hit from somewhere.


I did, thank God, enjoy two of the dishes. Chicharron was a huge sheet of baked cheese which you break chunks off to scoop up the excellent Guacamole underneath, and was enormous fun. The salty, crispy cheese made a perfect accompanyment to the soft rich guacamole, and although you'd hope to enjoy it for £7, it was - unlike most of the other courses - interesting, tasty and generous in proportion. Excellent too was tostada ceviche, which contained marvellously moist and flavoursome chunks of white fish, a delicately crusty base and a good fresh dressing. It was barely a mouthful of food for over £5, although I'm sure a lot of effort went into its construction.



With a (nice enough) margarita each the bill came to £46 for two, and although this isn't a fortune by London standards, it is quite a lot considering we left if not hungry then not full, and hardly impressed by much of what we ate. I can see what Lupita are trying to do, and certainly somewhere attempting to produce anything Mexican other than cheddar nachos and burritos needs to be encouraged, but I got the impression that a lot of these dishes held a promise of tasty food that hadn't, for whatever reason, quite been allowed to make good. If I'm in this part of town again with a craving for tacos, I'll head for Wahaca - it's not perfect, but it's just that bit better, and cheaper, than Lupita. And in a town with quite so many terrible Mexican restaurants as London, that, for now, is good enough.

5/10

Tempo, Mayfair

At first, I thought I'd turned up at the wrong place. Normally you'd expect a smart Italian restaurant in Mayfair to be visited by smart Mayfair types, and indeed there were a few in evidence last night; portly old men in dark suits with their bejewelled and be-frocked wives. But mainly this comfortable and attractive room was populated by table after table of Japanese - at a rough guess I'd say at least half the customers once all the seats were taken (and they all were) by the middle of the evening. It turns out that the chef at Tempo - a certain Yoshi Yamada - has quite a following in his native country and despite (or perhaps because of) the very traditionally Italian food served, seeing so many Japanese faces here is a regular thing. It may be tempting to make a quip about national stereotypes and 'following the flag', but based on just how many British visitors to New York flock to Gordon Ramsay's (very average by all accounts) restaurant at the London Hotel, it's clear that such gastro-tourism isn't confined to just one country. In any case, the clientele at Tempo have a much more important reason to visit than to gawp at a celebrity chef - the food is really bloody good.



The sight of the house bread briefly gave me a hideous flashback to Dego, but despite the similar styles and shapes these, thank God, were a world apart. They weren't stale, for a start. More than that, though, the focaccia was moist and moreish, the bread sticks flavoured subtly with caraway seeds, and the large crispbreads were oaty and beautifully seasoned.


All three cicchetti that we tried were excellent. The fried seafood, crumbed in polenta I think, were greaseless and the whitebait in particular had a fantastic flavour. It was also nice to find a whole baby squid in amongst the other larger pieces of calamari. A single chunk of octopus tentacle had a delicate crisp on the outside and full flavour within, and came with a nice sharp parsley and pomegranate salad. But best of all was a simply astonishing N'duja sausage crostino, shockingly chillified and satisfyingly piggy.


This mussel and razor clam antipasti had a decent (if slightly under-seasoned) broth and contained good fresh seafood, but the real star of the show were the borlotti beans which added a buttery richness and interesting texture. I also liked the huge chunks of garlic.


Wild boar pappardelle was another top dish; lovely firm eggy pasta topped with a heady, gamey ragu flavoured - as my friend spotted - with bone marrow for extra unctuousness. It was seasoned well and the thick ribbons of pasta were silky and delicious.



It was probably only the contrast with the extremely the high standards of the previous dishes that meant I didn't quite enjoy a fish stew as much as I thought I would. Although one particular element - a heavenly charcoal-grilled (I think) chunk of smoky white fish - was brilliant, the other bits including the broth were rather one-dimensional for a plate of food costing the best part of £20. Similarly, baby chicken (sorry, polletto) had a nice crispy skin but the thigh and breast portions were noticably more moist and tasty than the slightly overcooked legs. No disasters here, with either dish, but no fireworks either. Those would have to wait for the dessert.


"The best lemon tart I have ever eaten in my life" my friend said, and she is not normally easy to impress. An impossibly delicate toasted sugar crust topped a light, citrusy filling, all supported by a perfectly judged pastry base. The wobbly lemon filling dissolved like warm jelly in the mouth, and if the tart itself wasn't brilliant enough, taken with the slightly soured cream the contrast between sharp and earthy, sweet and sour was extraordinary. It was a pudding so perfect, so completely satisfying on every level that even if nothing else the whole evening had been edible the trip to Mayfair would have still been worthwhile. Heavenly. Oh, some ice creams and sorbets were quite nice too, particularly the mascarpone one.


Tempo is, by anyone's standards, a very good Italian restaurant and although you would hope so at these prices (we didn't pay but I imagine if we had there wouldn't have been much change from £150 for the two of us), being expensive and being in Mayfair is no guarantee that a place is going to be any good - just look at Theo Randall. The lows were never too low to be uncomfortable, and the highs - I'm thinking particularly of the house bread, the n'duja crostino and That Lemon Tart - were occasionally stratospheric. Last night I learned that the country of your birth need have nothing to do with the type of food you cook, that the owner of Tempo is mates with Jeffrey Archer (true story), and a lemon tart can be a life changing event. And most of all, the Japanese have excellent taste in restaurants.

8/10

I was invited to review Tempo.

Salt House Tapas, Liverpool

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