“8 HOURS” baked tomatoes in sweet Oloroso - what a dish!! @ Cambio de Tercio-Tendido Cero-Tendido Cuatro-Capote & Toros.

I went to Cambio de Tercio the other night after work with Andy and experienced some really unique and exciting dishes!! 

Since the opening in 1995, Cambio De Tercio has concentrated on Modern Spanish cuisine.

The restaurant is located on Old Brompton Road, the nearest tube is South Kensington.

The interior of the restaurant is bursting with personality. 
Filled with bright colours and huge Spanish paintings which look really effective and bold on the vibrant walls.

Andy had been here before and hadn't shut up about it. He knew exactly what to order but we also went for a few wild cards too. He had not stopped going on about the '8 hour Tomatoes' so these were definitely on our list!

We sat down to eat at 7pm and by 7.30 the restaurant was totally full! I really loved the buzzing atmosphere, it seemed like this was the place to be......and it was :)

We started off with two glasses of house Cava which was refreshing and exactly what you need after a long day at work. 

And then we were on to the wine :)

Andy chose this and assured me I would love it.

It was really beautiful, we have similar tastes in wine.

Happy times, bring on the food :)

We started with this -

The famous deconstructed Spanish Omelette from EL BULLI (El Bulli was a Michelin 3-star restaurant in Catalonia, Spain. It was voted one of the best restaurants in the world but is now closed)

Think warm gooey cheese omelette .....but that doesn't do it justice. It was soooooo delicious and different and YUMMY. 

Next we had .....

Sardines marinated in sherry vinegar, Arbequina olives, baby gems and Martini Rosso jelly.

This was a wild card. It didn't amaze me. 

It was too strong in flavour but it gave the wine a real kick! 

And now the dish I had been waiting for..........

8 hour Tomatoes!!! 

Baked tomatoes in sweet Oloroso - Oloroso ("scented" in Spanish) is a variety of fortified wine.

WOW

DREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAMY!!!!

I was in a good place :)

It tasted like a kind of sweet tomato jam, each mouthful just melted in your mouth!

What a great idea and such a unique 'signature dish' to promote the restaurant.

I will be going back for more very soon!!!! 

Next up, one of my favourites! 

I was really looking forward to this and it did not disappoint.

The octopus was juicy and just perfect :) but ooohhhhh the sauce!!! The cheesy, potato sauce was amaaaaaaaaazing, similar flavours to the El Bulli dish.

Time for some MEAT........

Grilled lamb cutlets!

They were tender, pink and bursting with flavour.

And to finish our Spanish journey......

Crispy Serrano ham Croquettes, thyme and tomato sauce.

Andy was full up so I ate them ALL!!!!! Soooooo goooooooooooood, really appealing to the child within :)

What a FANTASTIC meal!!!! 

I couldn't manage dessert but we were given complimentary chocolates which were HEAVENLY.

I also ate all of these so as you can imagine it finished the meal off well!

You can really take your time in a restaurant like this, each course is exciting and full of different and exciting flavours. That's what is so lovely about the Spanish style of eating.

If you like Spanish food you MUST check this place out!!

http://www.cambiodetercio.co.uk/cambio-de-tercio/en/

MORITO - recent discovery!

On Saturday Andy and I went for a walk.

We were starving and went on the hunt for somewhere new!

We walked from our house in Angel (London) to Exmouth Market.

Exmouth Market secretly hidden in-between Angel and Farringdon and has lots of interesting restaurants, bars and cafes. It's got a really cool, trendy vibe.

We walked past a little Tapas restaurant called Morito and thought hmmm we're really in the mood for some Tapas :)

We were seated by the window which was lovely, it's so nice to be able to look out the window and see the world go by.

The cocktail list was far too good so we asked them for two of their most popular ones.

We had a 'rebojito' which is fino, lemonade and mint.....

.....and a 'cava pomegranate' cava and pomegranate juice......

They were both beautifully refreshing and bursting with flavour. We had never tried fino and lemonade before but it's now our new favourite drink!

So time to order some foooooood!!!
It's always so hard with tapas, every dish sounds amazing!

We started with the lamb chops, cumin and paprika with a dish of  chickpeas, pumpkin, coriander and tahini.

Both dishes were outstanding! The chickpea dish especially had such unique flavours, I couldn't stop eating it!

The puntillitas arrived - fried baby squid. Really nice but nothing special.

To go with our tapas feast we ordered a carafe of red wine - borsao garnacha/syrah @ £11. It was really bold and fruity and went really well with each dish.

Then the next dish arrived....charcoal grilled leeks and romesco YUM!!!!!

Romesco is a nut and red pepper-based sauce from Spain. It is made from a mixture of roasted almonds, pine nuts and hazelnuts, roasted garlic, olive oil and peppers. I had never tried it before but I love it...will try and make it at home :)

And then one of my personal favourites! Pulpo a la gallega - octopus, potato and paprika.

WOW! It was the BEST octopus I have ever had!!!! Next time i'm ordering two!! Sooooo fresh and delicious!!

It's crazy to think they cooked all that amazing food in that TINY kitchen!!!!!

What a great discovery! It's funny how it's been so close to our house all this time but we had never been. We will be going there allot now!!
Tapas is so much fun and it's so nice to relax and take your time between each dish.

The menu changes daily with different specials so you can always try new dishes.
Prices range betweem £4 - £8 per dish, depending on what you have.
Check it out!
http://www.morito.co.uk

LA FROMAGERIE...cheese heaven :)

I felt in need of a little treat this weekend, so me and Andy headed to La Fromagerie.
There are two of these in London, one in Marylebone and one in Highbury.

We went to the Highbury shop....good bye diet! I think a cheese and wine lunch is in order!!

La Fromagerie is one of the BEST cheese shops in all of London with different cheeses sourced from all over the world.

As we walked in it looked very quaint and cosy with an intimate tasting cafe for 6...a few benches for eating. At the back was a maturing cellar.....basically a chilled walk-in cheese room....CHEESE HEAVEN :)

The smell was incredible and I couldn't wait to start sampling all the delicious cheeses and of course swigging it down with a juicy glass of red!!

We sat at a bench by the window and browsed the menu......we ordered a French cheese sharing board and a charcuterie plate (which were both around £8) with some olives, fresh bread, crackers and two selected glasses of house red to accompany the cheese.

There were 5 different cheeses on the sharing board, each one was just beautiful and she explained where they were from and what kind of cheeses they were.

FRENCH CHEESE BOARD

CHABICHOU, POITOU, Goat

Fresh tasting soft, yet quite close textured cheese

COULOMMIERS, ILE DE FRANCE

A velvety white crust housing a mellow rich cheese

SALERS D`ESTIVE, AUVERGNE, Cow

Firm texture with a definite edge when aged, in the style of a cheddar

LANGRES, CHAMPAGNE

Inside is a rich, moist, spicy cheese which should be almost melting

BLEU DE GEX, HAUT Jura, Cow

Threads of blue veins work their way through the creamy, crumbly pate

The charcuterie plate consisted of various hams, one with truffle which I hadn't tried before and also duck rillettes which is a kind of pate made with succulent duck, really tasty and great to spread on warm bread :)

The house wine we had was a French Cabernet Sauvignon and it went beautifully with the cheese.


This is where we sat...

After an hour or so of indulging ourselves and watching the world go by from the window, we had another look around the shop. There are so many delectable treats it's hard to take them all in and also hard not to try and eat everything!

Despite being HUGELY tempted by the all the cakes and pastries we opted for cappuccinos to wake us up from our heavenly cheese coma.

I will be going to the one in Marlebone soon, which is a bigger version of this place, to try more delicious treats.

It was such a lovely lunch and really nice to do something different.
I strongly recommend this absolute gem.
Unfortunately you cannot book so I suggest if there are more than two of you to go to the one Marylebone.

Right I'm off to the gym now!!!

http://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/

Hix Oyster & Chop House!

2 weeks ago, on a Friday night after work , it was snowing in London and we wanted to go for dinner somewhere fairly local. As Andy works in the city and we live close by, we decided to go to Hix Oyster & Chop House.

The Oyster and Chop house was Hix's debut restaurant after going solo in 2008.

I was really looking forward to this restaurant as I had heard it had a very unique menu and was one of 'THE' places to eat in the city...as it had been snowing and Andy was in jeans and snow boots we were also attracted by the casual dress code.
I thought to myself, I am going to order a big fat juicy steak and sink it down with a bottle of fruity red.....what a perfect way to escape the snow.



As we walked in we were greeted by a lovely hostess, she offered us drinks at the bar first but we decided to go straight to the table and have some cocktails there, the bar did not look terribly appealing and at that time it was a little dead, most likely because of the snow.

The restaurant was quite small and had a 1920s theme with 1920s music playing.

It had a cool, quirky vibe and I really liked it.




We were shown to our table which was nice, only thing I didn't like was it over looked a small kitchen area and there were dirty blue cleaning cloths hanging over the tap and it looked really grimy. If it was a cool, slick kitchen and you could see them preparing dishes this would have been great but they didn't seem to use it much and it took away the special vibe this place had to begin with.

A really sweet waitress approached us, dressed in a smart shirt and she looked really friendly.
Hello! Cocktail menus?

Yes please. Hmmm what shall we go for, I asked the waitress if they had any cucumber based long drinks, they had none on the menu but she said the barman would be happy to knock something up. Amazing!

She came back shortly with our drinks, mine was gorgeous! Exactly what I wanted and I asked her to thank the barman for me!

Ordering time....

We toyed with the idea of having oysters to start but we just weren't in the mood, with all the snow outside I really fancied a hot soup.

Andy noticed  Lambs brains on toast on the starter menu.....he constantly wants to try new things, so he of course chose this!

I , however, opted for something less risky, I chose the horseradish soup, even though I'm not a fan of horseradish, the waitress told me it was creamy and not too hot, so I thought id give it a go.

We ordered a bottle of Pinot Noir, Drouhin Wilamete Valley, Oregon, USA 2010.

The wine arrived....

It was beautiful, very fruity and fairly light - a great choice at a reasonable price. We were happy.

The starters arrived.....

Even though the idea of eating Lambs brains turned my stomach I was really excited to see what they looked like!

They had been lightly fried with flour and came on 2 pieces of toast.

It looked very interesting and actually quite appealing.

Andy had a huge mouthful with no hesitation, and smiled at me as I waited in anticipation.

He said they were really nice, with a very unique texture.....

I had to try some and see for myself, I guess it's nice to be able to say you have tried Lambs brains!

They were soft, very rich and creamy, like nothing I had eaten before. The flavours blended nicely with the toast.....I could only stomach one mouthful as it was BRAINS!

My soup?
DELICIOUS! I was really impressed, it was very thick and mixed in with bread crumbs which were really tasty. After every mouthful I could feel the heat of the horseradish in my nose, it certainly warmed me up and gave the wine a spicy kick.

For our main courses I had chosen the Hanger Steak with baked bone marrow. I had never 

tried bone marrow before so I was looking forward to this!




Andy went for the Woodcock, complete with the head and beak. 

We sat back, enjoyed our wine and noticed the restaurant had really started to fill up.

The main courses arrived.....

I asked for my steak to be cooked medium rare, I sliced into it to check and it the was perfect colour of pink, YUM!

Andy's bird looked a little on the small side and he was slightly disappointed....he was really hungry. 
My steak was delicious, bursting with flavour, the bone barrow was really tasty, reminded me a little of butter, the texture is velvety and smooth and went really well with the steak. I was slightly hesitant in trying it but really enjoyed the new experience.

The Woodcock meat was incredible, very rich and beautiful but just not enough of it.  He ended up eating half of mine!

To finish our evening at Hix we both had 2 double Amaretto liqueurs on the rocks, even though the dessert menu was tempting!

We were really impressed with the meals, I felt the menu offered lots of exciting new dishes which most people would not have tried before so the experience is allot of fun!

However I do feel it was a little over priced, and reading all the other reviews when I got home I saw lots of people had said this too.

I think the venue could have offered more to add to the over-all experience. It's all very basic...relying too much on the 1920s 'too cool for school' atmosphere. 
There was no WOW factor for me but I did enjoy the food.
I think it would be great for a group of men or a business lunch.

Check it out!

http://www.hixoysterandchophouse.co.uk

Tapas time at El Pirata

A few weeks ago I was walking around Mayfair and I stumbled upon a restaurant which was hidden from the main streets. I was immediately intrigued as it was standing alone, tucked away amongst the glam of Mayfair.

I loved the inside lay-out  as it looked really cool and interesting. The walls were covered top to bottom with art work from Miro and Picasso which gave me the feel this place was packed with culture.

                       

As I walked closer to check out the menu I noticed it was Spanish Tapas, great I LOVE Tapas and hadn't been to a really good Tapas restaurant since Barcelona.

Could this place provide a Spanish retreat.....which we all need in January!

El Pirata Spanish restaurant in Down Street exudes Mayfair style. Matías Costa/©ICEX

When I got home I looked up the restaurant and read the reviews, they were fantastic and lots of people had commented on how authentic the food was and how it was very reasonable and NOT your average Mayfair prices.

This was a real hidden gem that I had not heard of before but I had to go and see for myself.....

I booked us a table for the following Saturday night.

I was really excited to see what this new find had in store for us, I love discovering new restaurants and love it even more when they deliver!

After banging on about it all week to Andy, Saturday finally arrived.

The restaurant is located about 5 mins from Green Park tube, it's secretly located in the back streets which immediately makes you feel like you're going somewhere really special and unique.

As we entered we were greeted by a loud, bubbly, Spanish manager who welcomed us in a very friendly manner, he asked us if it was our first time there.

We explained it was and he smiled, as if to suggest we were in for a real treat and a good night!

         

          So far so good! 

          Drinks at the bar first?

          Oh yes, I was looking forward to  a nice cold glass of cava :)

          I ordered the house, it was very refreshing and light.

The bar staff were really friendly and even said we could eat on the bar if we would like.

I looked around and saw a few people were and thought it's a great idea if you wanted a few casual drinks and dishes.

Scanning the restaurant more it became evident of the lovely mixture of clientele this place attracted, lots of nice couples, some groups of friends, a few families and there was a birthday dinner happening down stairs. I loved the spiral staircase leading down to the lower level, the dynamics of the restaurant gave it a very buzzy atmosphere

We both absolutely loved it, but we were yet to try the food....

After our drinks we were shown to our table, it was a great table, exciting views from both sides, don't you just hate it when your facing a wall!

Our waiter came over and introduced himself.

We asked him to recommend a bottle of wine for us. 

As we drink mainly French reds we explained we didn't  know much about Spanish wine and the waiter pointed out a Pinot Noir for us which was around £30, it was nice of him to not recommend a really expensive wine as some waiters do. 

The tricky part about Tapas is choosing the dishes as there are so many and they all sound delicious!

We both picked out our favourites...

I chose - 

Octopus brushed with olive oil and paprika , 
deep fried medallions of monk fish, 
marinated chicken skewers with chorizo 
and aubergine stuffed with vegetables & topped with cheese.

Andy chose -

Chicken livers in white wine & onion sauce, 
meatballs, 
prawns in olive oil, garlic & dry hot chili peppers 
and then we both decided to try the baby eels in olive oil, garlic & roasted potatoes..

Yes we ordered way too much food, as we always do, but it was our first time there and we wanted to try everything. Next time we will definitely order less.

Each dish was seriously TASTY, we were really impressed. It was at the standard you would expect in Spain.

The baby eels? Delicious! I was a little apprehensive but they were yummy, nice and salty. 

We took our time and the waiter brought out 2/3 dishes at a time.

The wine was OK, nothing amazing but it went well with food....at 14% we were both pretty tipsy by the end which is when a cheeky dessert was required :)

 I had fried banana served with honey and ice cream and Andy had creme brulèe with a crunchy caramelised top.

They were both gorgeously sweet and really hit the spot after our meal.

We had so much fun and really enjoyed ourselves, I will be recommending this place to everyone and going back very soon to try more dishes!

They also do a dinner set menu at either £16.35 per person or £20.95 pp, depending how hungry you are.
I think that's excellent value for money.

Check out the website and get booking :)

http://www.elpirata.co.uk