The ‘BB’ Burger at Bar Boulud Knightsbridge

Words & Photography by Marina Benjamin and Luiz Hara

Name: Bar Boulud

Where: Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park, 56 Knightsbridge, London DW1X 7LA, http://www.barboulud.com/london

Cost: Starters range from fish soups to salads and are priced from £9-19 while sharing boards of charcuterie start at £30. Mains are a selection of bistro dishes (£9-£34) and desserts (£6-12) are modern inflections of French classics. The Menu Buchon (working lunch) is good value, with 2 and 3 courses for £18 and £21 respectively.

About: Bar Boulud occupies a swish street facing location on the ground floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. At lunchtimes, a crowd of tourists and shoppers, business folk and families, pours through the giant front doors, making for a bustling brasserie atmosphere within. 

The wait staff is completely professional yet an informal mood prevails, which is all the better to eat with. You won’t find the haughty pretentious of haute cuisine here - instead the restaurant gets on with feeding people delicious and hearty food that hails from provincial France; the steaks might come with chimichurri; the burgers with green chilli mayo; and the fries arrive, thin, crisp and moreish, in paper cones that sit in metal tins.

There is a sense of fun about Bar Boulud, where playful snacky additions top and tail the menu, from cheesy puffs made of gruyère-infused choux pastry at one end, to truffles textured with puffed rice at the other. And the drinking can verge on frivolity: there is a Gin menu that stands on its own and boasts not only gins flavoured with saffron, but tonics tinged with elderflower, cardamom, watermelon or lemongrass. Every now and then, depending on who’s visiting, or indeed, on a whim, the sommelier might decide to open a 6 litre Imperiale of wine and treat lucky diners to extraordinary vintages from Bordeaux or the Rhone Valley at a fraction of what they’d normally cost.

What We Had: We came with one goal in mind: The London Foodie’s ongoing appreciation of the top-notch burger. Yet having travelled through London on an unseasonably warm day, cross-town from meetings elsewhere, we were hungry enough to be tempted by the aforementioned gougères (£5), and a zingy starter of gravlax (£12) – delectable slices of salmon cured in gin but curiously missing the usual dill borders.

I love a restaurant that takes pride in its bread, and Bar Boulud gets extra points on this count, because it serves pointy sheaves of well-textured baguette with exquisite pats of creamy butter, salted just right.  If you’re not careful you could fill up on bread alone. Or even better, bread washed down with a glass of the Francois Monay house Champagne, sold at a very reasonable £12.95 a glass.

The burgers, when they came, brought a whiff of Americana with them. Sitting in regal solitude on their rectangular white plates the char-grilled patties looked fit to bust out of their buns, in explosions of generous demi-rare redness, juicy and properly textured in a visibly granular way. 

Bar Boulud offers just three kinds of burger: The Yankee (£17), which consists of 8oz of prime British ground beef, minimally accompanied by staples from the vegetable crisper drawer – lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle. Cheese is optional. I opted to have it, but was a little disappointed that it had congealed on the way to our table and wasn’t the hot and molten sludge I’d been anticipating. The meat, however, was faultless; soft enough to adhere, but grainy enough to fall apart at the merest contact with tooth. And packed with flavour too.

Other options include The Piggie (£19), topped with barbecued pork, jalapeno mayo and cabbage, and served in a cheddar bun; and the ‘BB’, priced at a royal £24. This stunning confection of patty, foie gras and short ribs stuffed into a black onion seed bun with a slick of horseradish mayo, could challenge the healthiest of appetites. My dining buddy claimed his ‘BB’ was sublime and symphonious, and neither of us left a crumb on our plates.

It just so happened that the day before we visited, the sommelier had opened an Imperiale of Chateaux Clos Marsalette Bordeaux (2013). It was smooth as you like, and dreamy with warm red fruit tastes and aromas. This was available at £16 a glass, but you can also enjoy a 125ml glass of Barons de Rothschild Legende de Lafite at Bar Boulud for just £5.90.

Likes: Scrumptious burgers that set a bar for others to follow, and the best bread and butter in town. The Chateaux Clos Marsalette Bordeaux wine was exceptional.

Dislikes: I’d like to see a range of condiments offered with the burgers, mustards and relishes that you can add on and play with. This, it seems to me, would be in the spirit of friendly build-your-own dining that Bar Boulud cultivates so well.

Verdict: Bar Boulud is a great lunch spot in the heart of Knightsbridge – writing this, I can’t think of much else I’d rather have right now than their BB Burger & frites with a glass of Chateaux Clos Marsalette, perfection! Recommended.

L'Anima - Italian Cooking with Soul

By Marina Benjamin

Name: L’Anima

Where: 1 Snowden Street, London, EC2A 2DQ - www.lanima.co.uk

Cost: Starters cost £14-£26. Primi are £13-£26 and secondi are £16 to £38. Desserts are £7-£13.50. A meal for two from the à la carte menu with wine is roughly £150.

About: When Californian property developer and first-time restaurateur Peter Marano opened L’Anima in 2009, the City was in the depths of recession, and Marano joked that in lieu of bankers wining and dining on their bonuses, insolvency specialists would eat there. What he didn’t count on was that other professionals living and working on the Shoreditch-City border, where L’Anima occupies an out-of-the-way nook, would flock to the place. They were lured by tales of excellent southern Italian food, all of it finely wrought but without losing any of its ‘soul’ (‘l’Anima’ is Italian for soul). Since then L’Anima has gone from strength to strength, now with Sardinian chef Lello Favuzzi heading up the kitchen, mixing ingredients and flavours from Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria and Puglia, and, if he’s in the mood, adding a Moorish twist.

The vibe at L’Anima is white: white floors, white walls, white tables, white chairs. And yet somehow it is not in the least clinical. L’Anima may look austere, but its feel is distinctly welcoming – like Warren Beaty’s paradise in the movie Heaven’s Gate. There’s warm lighting, vast windows, a moody, mirrored bar and friendly, informal staff: sitting in L’Anima you feel uplifted rather than cleansed. And the transport begins when you sample the bone dry Aneri house Prosecco (£9 per glass), accompanied by a homely bread basket and succulent green olives from Puglia.

What We Had: We sampled seven dishes from Chef Lello’s then new autumn menu, many of them light and maritime – as if still clinging to the last days of summer. But to kick off we tried a winter warmer: two beetroot tortelli, huddled in the middle of a vast plate, and twisted up with small cuts of yellow turnip, a few leaves of wilted spinach and fried sage. The dish was almost too beautiful to eat, but the tasting was as good as the looking. Inside the pillowy soft pasta parcels was a smoky burrata filling perfectly set off by a balsamic reduction. To cut the richness, we had a glass of crisp 2014 Vermentino from Isola dei Nuraghi (£6.20).

A medley of fish dishes followed. Grilled octopus with smoked aubergine purée, and crumbled ricotta mustia (£16.50) was paired with a Terre Nobili made from the Greco grape (£10.50). This had a strong scent of sherry on the nose and was robust enough to stand up to the earthy notes of the dish.

A sublime plate, in which a couple of melt-in-the-mouth Mazara prawns, grapefruit and burnt leek, accompanied a generous dollop of creamy stracciatella (£15.00), was paired with a buttery, apple-scented chardonnay from Puglia, called Pietrabianca (£13.50). In other hands this dish might have easily not worked. Add watercress oil and smoky grated Sardinian bottarga, and you’ve got a formidable number of ingredients in play. But it is a testimony to Lello’s talent that it achieved harmony and balance.

The final ‘starter’ was a dish of Malloredus (a traditional Sardinian pasta dish) and blue lobster in a delicate shellfish broth, dotted with pointy, seared florets of Romanesco cauliflower (£17.50). Malloreddus is more like gnocci than pasta, and its black colour derives from the ‘burnt flour’ that is left after the rest of the wheat has been used up. After the big flavours of the tortelli and octopus, this was a delicate and homely offering. It tasted of the sea. With it, we drank a pleasantly floral Bardolino rosé from the Veneto (£8.50).

The meat offering was a slow-cooked piece of pig cheek coated in a jus that had been reduced down to rich, glossy perfection to deliver a deep, meaty kick (£21.50). The yin and yang of the dish was achieved with celeriac purée and a tasty smear of sweet Mirto reduction (a Sardinian liqueur ). It was properly autumnal and hearty. The red wine that Sommelier Gian Marco chose to accompany the pork was complex and more-ish; a 2013 Aglianico “Core”, that sells for £14 a glass. A little of this wine goes a long way, but I could happily have taken my time with a bottle.

To finish off our meal, which left us sated but not uncomfortably full, we had some punchy hazelnut gelato, made that morning and whipped to the texture of a cloud. And we tasted the Amalfi lemon soufflé, another airy confection, but this time we poured hot and spicy molten chocolate into its middle. It hit the register on all counts: tart, bitter, sweet and chilli. A perfect end to the meal.

Likes: Unpretentious refinement and food to remember. A modestly sized wine list from small producers across the country (the cellar, in fact, is organized regionally, so you can trace a circuit from north to south Italy) offers wine not just by the glass but for very reasonable prices by the carafe as well.

Dislikes: There’s not much to cavil about.. This is food that deserves to be enjoyed more widely. Shoreditch, are you still listening?

Verdict: Chef Lello’s take on Sardinian and Puglian fare has all the warmth and flavour of southern home cooking, but with a finesse that comes from true artistry. Highly recommended.

Sharing is Caring at SUDA Thai Cafe

Words & Photography by Marina Benjamin and Luiz Hara

Name: SUDA Thai Cafe

Where: St Martin’s Courtyard off Upper St. Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9AB, http://www.suda-thai.com/

Cost: Average spend is around £35 per person (not including drinks). The prices of each individual dish is shown below.

About: Tucked away in mega-hip St. Martin’s Court, just off the Seven Dials in London’s Covent Garden, Suda is a Thai-style Cafe from the creators of the much-loved Patara group of restaurants (reviewed here).

Suda is more street than suave, the concept being bites, sharing platters, and small tapas-style bowls. If Patara is sit-down formal, at Suda the vibe is fast and feisty, as befits a restaurant in the city’s go-go theatre and dining epicenter. We had a very enjoyable dinner for four on a sultry Friday evening in July and though Suda’s large dining room was hopping throughout the evening, service was consistently warm and welcoming. 

What We Ate: The food began with two sharing platters. The Suda platter is a cracking deal at £8.50 per person (minimum two people) and delightfully arrayed with a duck wrap, chicken and prawn dumplings, Thai fish and prawn lollipops, Thai prawn crackers, mini chicken satay sticks, and sweet potato curls. The lollipops were particularly tasty: moist and flavourful on the inside and crisp on the outside. The satay sauce – always a bellwether for Thai restaurants – was not too sweet and had the right note of heat to offset the tender satay chicken.

The Small Bites platter (£9.50 per person) offered encores of several Suda platter dishes, but also included marinated BBQ pork skewers that were a little fatty but compensated by some delicious grilled lamb chops, charred to perfection yet still pink and juicy. Crispy noodle-wrapped prawns were accompanied by a number of dipping sauces that were sweet and sharp by turn: a lovely play of tastes on the palate.

Reaching the main courses, we discovered that Suda excels at curry. We had the Small Bowls version, which allowed us to sample five curries whilst still leaving room for more adventuring through the Suda menu. If you’re a fan of Thai curries, we’d recommend it very highly.

Our Small Bowls carousel featured four of Suda’s meaty curries and one vegetarian curry, and all were satisfying in different ways: Gaeng Kiew Waan (£4.25) is a lovely green curry with chicken that packs a surprising back-note of heat, while Gaeng Garee Gae (£4.75), or yellow lamb curry, was mild yet complex.

Gaeng Massaman Gai (£4.25) is Suda’s take on classic Southern Thai chicken massaman and was appropriately deep and rich, ringing with playful undertones of cinnamon. Gaeng Panang Nua (£4.25) had long notes of mild curry spice amplifying well-cooked sirloin beef. The lone vegetarian curry, Gaeng Kiew Waan Pak (£3.95) didn’t let down the party: it was rich with vegetables and flavour, and medium-spiced in keeping with its meatier siblings.

Accompanying the Suda curry extravaganza was a very passable Pad Thai (£10.50 or £16.50), with juicy grilled prawns and with lime segments and crushed peanuts on the side, DIY-style. With these dishes we had Kao Mun (£3.50), mild coconut rice that was a perfect complement to the curries.

Suda’s dessert menu is simple but classic, and we managed three offerings between us, all perfect for a warm summer evening. Kao Niew I-Tim Ka-Ti (£3.95) was a perfectly judged take on a Thai classic of sticky sweet rice with homemade coconut ice cream, the latter being rich and oily and properly coconut-y in a way that is often hard to find. Kao Niew Mamuang (£5.95) was another sticky rice variation, this one with juicy chunks of tangy-sweet mango. But the real sweet treat was Gluay Hom Tod (£4.95): banana fritters pan-fried until crisp and golden, the heat sealing and intensifying the banana’s almost treacly richness, and served with vanilla ice cream topped with honey and sesame.

What We Drank: We began with cocktails from the tempting drinks menu: the Long cocktails were especially interesting, offering a distinctly Southern Asian twist on the classics. We tried a Pandan mojito - white rum with mint, pandan leaves, fresh lime, and vanilla liquor finished with soda – and a Suda passion, featuring rum with fresh passion fruit muddled with bitter lemon and sweet oranges topped with soda. Both were marvelously refreshing, but our group agreed that the cool and zingy savours of the Hendrick’s fizz – gin shaken with cucumber, fresh coriander and lemon juice – made it the refreshing star of the specialty drinks menu (all £7.45).

Many people assume that beer is the natural beverage with Thai food, but we were more than happy throughout the evening with Monsoon Valley Classic White (£19.50), a crisp Chenin Blanc/Columbard blend straight from Thailand that held up well to the curry carousel and was very drinkable on its own. It was another nice surprise in a menu full of them at Suda.

Likes: we loved the variety offered in the three different sharing platters we tried, they made for a very sociable evening, the curries were particularly good!

Dislikes: None.

Verdict: Suda is a great place for easy-going Thai cooking – it is affordable and now with a selection of sharing platters on offer, there is so much to sample from. Recommended. 

Brasserie Chavot Revisited and a To-Die-For Cassoulet!

Words & photography by Marina Benjamin and Luiz Hara

Name: Brasserie Chavot

Where: Conduit Street, London W1S 2YF, http://www.brasseriechavot.com/

Cost: Nibbles, such as olives, nuts or freshly baked bread, are priced at £2.50 and aperitifs at £5.00. Starters range from £9.50-£13.50, mains from £17.50 to £26.00, sides £4-5.50, and desserts from £7.50-£9.00. Cheese is sold at £4.50 per gout, and served with a chewy slice of walnut bread.

About: Eric Chavot’s latest London venture is next door to the Westbury Hotel, where we began our evening. The Westbury’s Polo Bar has a grand ocean-liner type of elegance complete with plush carpet, blue velvet chairs and Swarovski crystal-beaded curtains. We enjoyed our cocktails there then progressed to Brasserie Chavot’s chandelier-hung and many-mirrored room.

Our second visit to Brasserie Chavot, (previously reviewed here in 2013), the restaurant describes itself as a Brasserie. It is relaxed and unstuffy as a brasserie should be, but the food is more refined. I suspect the appellation is meant to celebrate Chavot’s style – hearty, traditional, home-cooking – rather than substance of his food, which is sophisticated.  

The opulent dining room is a treat to eat in; lamp light flickers in gilded mirrors, the chandeliers glint. Even the floor has not been neglected - it is tiled with an intricate mosaic of tiny ceramic tiles in earthy shades.

While we decided what to eat, everything being tempting, we enjoyed a glass of excellent Ruinart Champagne (£19.50).

What We Ate: We opted for a mix of classic and modern French starters. The steak tartare (£11.00) arrived in a deep scoop of a bowl. It was well seasoned, the meat bejeweled with slivers of capers and parsley, the egg yolk adding just the right amount of creamy richness. It was served with delicious griddled sour dough, creating a sparky match of crunch and cream.

Our other starter was deep fried soft-shell crab with a whipped aïoli (£12.50) that had a distinct saffron kick. It was posh comfort food, yummy and moreish -  a Chavot signature dish and well worth trying.

The wine parings were well matched, sold by the glass and described only by three descriptors meant to conjure taste and smell. Wine number one, a cheeky red number was described as “hubba bubba gum, red fruit candy, raspberry” (it turned out to be a delicious spice and berry scented 2011 Moulin à Vent). The white was fresh and minerally, the words used to describe it on the menu were ‘grapefruit, white pepper, crushed stones’ (It was a Muscadet ‘Geniss’).

With the edge off my hunger, I took the time to look around the dining room. There was a pleasing lack of suited businessmen, and a preponderance of soft-spoken tourists – it was warm without being loud.

As we waited for our main courses to arrive M.Chavot treated us to a surprise course, a pan-fried filet of bream, served atop a tumble of warm nicoise-style salad, made with shaved fennel, cubed potato, black olive and tomato. A beautifully-judged dish, it balanced acid and sweet just so, and we fell upon it greedily.

If I were eating at home, I’d have stopped there, pleasantly near-full, with perhaps room for a few mouthfuls of this or that. But the main courses were so delicious we managed them without any protest. For traditionalists, the cassoulet de canard et cochon (£22.00) cannot be beaten. Although it was not traditional in the strict sense of the word: the sausage was not Toulouse, the pig replaced goose, and instead of the garlicky crumb, there was a lip-smackingly good giant crouton smeared with a bright slick of parsley and garlic pesto. The duck confit was rich and melting, the pig belly chewy and flavourful, and instead of white haricot beans, the meat lay on fat, flavoursome butter beans, slow-stewed with tomato.

The modern main was a canette (apparently much more tender than the male canard), its skin sticky with cherry reduction that had caramelized on the griddle, the meat succulent and almost gamey ( £21.50).  This was served with two elongated tubes of the lightest homemade macaroni, delicately sauced in a bechamel made with gruyere, parmesan, and a hint (just right) of truffle. This was exquisite, and surprisingly light. If only I could have somehow acquired an extra stomach, I could have tried the lamb.

To follow on from the rich and oaky Californian Chardonnay we sipped with our bream (Kendall-Jackson, 2013, £39), we tasted a Uragunan Bodegones, tannin rich and not so sweet as to overpower the cherried duck, (£42), and deep, iron- rich Hungarian Bolyki, a delicious blend drunk in the middle-ages by Turks who dubbed it  ‘bull’s blood’ (£48).

In some ways the desserts were the least of the feast. We ate a delectable baba au rhum,  served with a flavourful pressed pineapple, and a deconstructed lemon tart, with excellent pastry, but the soft piped meringue was texturally hard to distinguish from tart lemon curd.

The hospitable sommelier, Andreas Rosendal, is not just knowledgeable, but playful. He enjoys discovering wines from unlikely places (there’s a Syrian wine on the menu), and trying them out on diners. We enjoyed some truly delicious desert wines; a late harvest Juracon (£7.50), which was aromatic without being cloying, and Pineau de Charantes (£10), complex and grapey. But the star turn was a Uruguayan Alycone (£10), spicy with chocolate, but with vanilla and caramel hits.  

Likes: the luxurious dining room, and the to-die-for cassoulet.

Dislikes: feeling a bit too full to walk home, but it was entirely my own doing. What’s more I’d do it again.

Verdict: For hearty yet sophisticated French fair in London, Brasserie Chavot is among my favourite places in London. The cassoulet warrants a visit in its own right. Highly recommended.

A Flavour of Wiltshire's Best - #MeetTheMichelin Richard Davies at Selfridges

Words & Photography by Marina Benjamin and Luiz Hara

Richard Davies is the third Michelin chef in as many weeks to take over the kitchen at Selfridges’ The Corner Restaurant for the #MeetTheMichelins dinner series. This is a fabulous initiative by Selfridges giving some of the most talented UK chefs a platform to demonstrate haute cuisine from outside London. With a beautifully balanced six-course menu (priced at £75, with an additional £35 for the wine flight), Richard Davies treated us to a taste of Wiltshire – not least its tasty locally-reared pigs.

Before the meal began Davies popped out of the kitchen to meet everyone – he informed the assembled foodies that he hoped we’d like the pork belly dish he’d selected as a main course.  As he talked, lines of waiting staff emerged from behind him with plates of curling prawn crackers and boules of lightly whipped taramasalata, they meandered around the tables pouring glasses of the store’s own-label Adami Prosecco. This was distinctly peachy, and a wonderful companion to the intensely-flavoured crackers and salty roe. You could feel diners relax, and the volume of chatter rose accordingly.

At the Bybrook Restaurant at the Manor House Hotel (part of the Exclusive Hotels Group) near Bath, Davies has become known for his French-with-a-twist leanings, and for his lightness of touch. These qualities were in evidence here in spades, beginning with the loose heap of finely chopped beef tartare – which came with asparagus shavings, a quail’s egg, and smoky charcoal mayo.

It was melt-in-the-mouth delicious, and so summery and light that the sommelier paired it with a medium-bodied white wine, a blend of viognier and sauvignon blanc by Montesco Verdes Cobardes. It worked a treat and retails for a snip in the store (£16.99).

Staying with terroir, we moved onto duck – slices of smoked breast meat and a croquette of duck leg confit cooked with pickled shiimeji mushrooms. The textures were fabulous, when combined with crunchy candied macadamias and yielding vanilla-poached pears.

We drank a perky Beaujolais (Moulin a Vent Thibault Ligerbelair) that gave off banana on the nose and was riddled with liquorice and redcurrant (£26.99).

The mackerel dish that followed didn’t quite hit a high note for me. Though the fish was succulent and sweet-cured, the watercress velouté lacked bite and the celeriac remoulade made with horseradish instead of mustard needed more heat. The flavours melded harmoniously, but I was after a marriage of opposites.

The accompanying Austrian Hirtzberger Riesling Federspiel however, was flawless (£49.99).

Davies’ pork belly did not disappoint. It was succulent and full-flavoured, and a super-intense celeriac purée and apple compote really made it sing.

Heritage carrots completed this wonderful dish, as did the complex and deep-flavoured 2012 Quadratur from Coume del Mas, Cote de Roussillon (£34.99).

After a refreshing yoghurt and blackcurrant palette cleanser, the menu was rounded off with a Valrhona Chocolate tian, with cherries 3 ways – boozy in the middle, jammy in the obligatory smear, and with a few marinated halves for contrast. It was heaven on a plate, and a perfect end to the meal.

Selfridges’ in-house sommelier Dawn Davies pulled yet another rabbit out of her hat with a delicious chilled Spanish dessert red from Mataro Alta Alella, that was neither cloying nor fortified, but had enough strength to hold its own against the powerful cherries (£27.99 for 500ml). Excellently judged wines lifted this meal to really superlative heights.

I strongly suspect that dinner bookings at the Bybrook Restaurant will be in sore demand from Londoners with a newfound zest for Wiltshire’s best.

Spanish Tapas & Cava Pairing at Copa de Cava

Words & Photography by Marina Benjamin

Name: Copa de Cava

Where: 33 Blackfriars Lane, London, EC4V 6EP,  http://cava.co.uk

Cost: Cava – by the ‘copa’ – from £5. Tapas style plates £4-14. Nibbling menu £15.00 per person. Tasting menu with cava flight is £60.00 per person.

About: Copa de Cava is the new offshoot of the Camino and Bar Pepito group. But it’s very much its own thing – a project that focuses lovingly on small boutique cava makers, regional flavours, the chemistry of oak-barreling and grape blending, and the finer details of the methode champenoise, which involves double fermenting the cava in the bottle in deep underground caves and tunnels for anything up to two years. You might say Copa de Cava is to Cava what the craft ale movement is to beer: it celebrates the local, the particular, and the fiercely proud end of the drinks industry.

Situated in a vaulted basement under the Blackfriars Lane branch of Camino, Copa de Cava is cozy and clubbable, with a comfy armchair and dark wood vibe. On a Thursday night, it was buzzing with a young crowd but also a not-so-young crowd, roughly divided between people who were there merely to sip the golden-hued nectar, and those gamely ordering small plates from the modern menu of ‘deconstructed’ tapas.

What We Ate/Drank: Copa de Cava’s tasting menu is structured around an appealing idea: a flight of cava, with each glass matched to one or two small plates. So tempting was the notion of progressing through 6 glasses of distinctively fermented fizz – from a Rosado to a Semi-seco, and with every kind of Reserva in between – that other options barely registered. 

The Rosada, ripe with floral and strawberry scents, and tasting a bit like a Kir Royale but without the cloyingness, was paired with salty cured and smoked hams and a dish of "pan amb tomaquet" – crusty slivers of toast rubbed in fresh garlic, tomatoes and olive oil. The salt and sweet worked nicely together, even if the cava itself registered a little too high on sugar to qualify as an aperitif in my book.

The next cava in the flight was called Mont Marçal. This was my favourite of the evening. Dry and lemony on the nose and creamy, almost almondy in the mouth, this smooth-tasting beauty had been fermented for 15 months.

It was both delicious and more-ish, and it came with a Spanish omelette in a glass, a tasty mix of crushed potatoes and fried onions topped with a sabayon of egg yolk and onion oil.

The Brut Vilernau that came next couldn’t compete. A blend of traditional cava grapes, Macabeu and Parellada, with just a dash of Chardonnay, it was crisp and appley. Though it was well paired with tangy mussels cooked in tomato and onion, and a sharpish ceviche of stone bass, I’d have happily stuck with the Mont Marçal.

By time our fourth glass of cava arrived, a fine Aria, Segura Viudas Reserva, I was hungry for more than nibbles. And so I really appreciated the lovely aubergine tart that was a bit like a pissaladière, and a delicious dish of tender seared Iberico pork shoulder, bracingly rare in the middle, that came with a rich side of pearl barley risotto, flecked with tiny cubes of smoky chorizo and sprinkled with Manchego snow.

The cheese course was unexceptional – though it was boosted by a Gran Reserva from a small family-owned winery (Reserva de la Familia Juves y Camps). Full bodied and citrusy, with a toasty aftertaste, this cava really sang.

Five glasses of cava was about as much as I could handle, but the sixth glass of Semi-Seco was appealingly sweet and bubbly, and I managed to drink most of it. The dessert was billed as a Crema Catalana, but the restaurant had either run out of them or not made any that evening, and instead served up a glass thimble, containing a single raspberry smothered with sweetened whipped cream.

Likes: The warm atmosphere and friendly service were a real boon, and the staff is genuinely knowledgeable about the different cavas. The food was hit and miss, but the hits were truly delicious. The deconstructed tortilla at £4, and the pork shoulder with pearl barley risotto at £12 were especially good. And at £25 a bottle the Mont Marçal is a must have.

Dislikes: Copa de Cava is more bar than restaurant and with noise levels to match. I’d have preferred a mellower setting in which to savour the tasting menu.

Verdict. I look forward to another visit, when I’ll sit down with a bottle of Mont Marçal and sample some of the other tapas. I hear the steak tartare (£14) is excellent. Recommended.