Today is

By: Ikedi Ani-okoye

Tapas bar introduction

All too often, tapas bars in this country lack the garralous vibe of the real deal in Spain. In Madrid when you enter a bar you are hit! Spainls tapas bars are often famous for one single food. Some do a mean plate of patatas bravas and not much else. Others specialise in jamon iberico.

And the legs hang fiom the ceilings like meaty stalactites, or edible Chandeliers. my favourite in Madrid is a tiny place a few 100 yards from the Puerto del Sol with old tiled walls that serves gambas a la plancha. prawns blitzed on the grill with garlic and chili. and where horny-handed madrilenos stand and peel the shells off the prawns with lightning dexterity, then chuck them with the heads on the floor (while we Brits stand there clumsily pulling bits of shell off the flesh, and out of our teeth).

Eating at the Tapas Bar

At the end of the lunch or evening rush, the floor by the bar is nearly ankledeep in bits of discarded pink prawns, white paper napkins. ripped-up beer mats and fag-butts. Food doesn't get any better. Of course, the single-speciality tapas bar only works in Spain. where it is backed up by other places doing something similar in the area.

There, you can go from one bar to another, until you have eaten your fill of excellent plates of food, all prepared by people who are very, very good at the few dishes they do. A tapas bar in London has to be a very different beast A customer here will eat four or five dishes, at least, so the kitchen has to be able to knock out dozens of dishes, all of a High quality. Consistent is always the key for a restaurant, but it's even truer for a tapas
one. where the key is to get the balance right between complexity arid practicality

Red-hot spicy tapas bar

The people behind Dehesa have got it nailed. the new Soho restaurant is run by the same people who set up Fitzrovia's excellent Salt Yard. Simon Mullins   and Sanja Morris. Clearly, the word has spread first about This place. On Saturday night. it was jam-packed but luckily they found us a space for two right at the corner of the bar. which is just where you want to be when you have a thirst for Cruzcampo beer. As we perused the offerings, my companion opined that a tapas bar stands and falls on the price.

That's true, but its pardon peppers are the best indications of its quality. Eating a bowl of the little green pimentos is like playing roulette with food - while
most of them are mild, one in every 10 of the little blighters is red-hot spicy. They were the first thing to arrive, and were fan- tastic, cooked on a very hot grill that had blackenedl and softened them, and they Weren't oversalted, as they almost always are in Spain, where people probably think cholesterol is a 1950s toothpaste brand.

We continued with a squidgy polenta cake (£3.25), pinchos morunos (spicy Malagan lamb kebabs, £5.50), grilled baby squid (£5.50), and a hearty dish of salmon with lentils (£6.25) Iast up was the pork belly in rosemary- scented beans (£5.50). It was good and gooey, although was voted only the second-best that my Friend had eaten.

Still, that's not exactly bad. We finiished with a plate of three Huge triangles of different manchego cheeses with membrillo, (£6.25). and at the end felt just nicely full. We asked for the bill and held our breath. A pretty reasonable £51, including service. Honestly. There's noihing to fault dehesa is one of the Best places I have eaten in the past six months. and I won't be happy until there's one on every street corner More. please.