Spagnoletti
Spagnoletti is an Italian style restaurant operating with a sharing dishes concept. We visited this in the middle of October, when it was reasonably busy.
Just like other sharing dishes places, they recommend a certain number of plates per person. In Spagnoletti's case, three to four. As part of this concept, most of the dishes also come at random moments.
We weren't especially hungry, and the waiter was surprised that we did not order the recommended amount of plates. However, for our starters we ordered the wild mushrooms and truffle arancini, with a whipped goat's cheese, and the suckling pig and black pudding croquettes. The arancini stood out. They had a perfectly crisp and seasoned coating and a smooth mushroom filling, and the whipped goats cheese was both delicious alone and as an accompaniment to the arancini. The croquettes sadly were a little underwhelming, both in terms of flavour and the amount of filling.
For her main course, my wife picked the burrata, which was served with butternut squash and chicory leaves. I chose the risotto with a pulled shin of beef and bone marrow. The burrata showed up first, and we soon realised that the warm risotto wasn't coming until the cold burrata had been eaten. The burrata with butternut squash, with a few bits of mandarin was a good combination, with the slightly bitter chicory rounding it off. The risotto, once it arrived half an hour later, was quite wet, with the rice on top of the pulled beef and bone marrow, and had an odd “gravy” sitting with the meat. It had depth, but it was a little strange to eat… and overall far too wet
Because the burrata came before the risotto, we didn't really get to eat at the same time, even though we had mentioned that these would be our main dishes. Awkward. Luckily, they did have a couple of interesting beers from the Portobello microbrewery that we enjoyed during the waiting time.
Sometimes, a place that does "sharing dishes" works fine, but in this case, it fell a little flat on its face.
Bubala
We visited Bubala, a vegetarian and vegan restaurant, on a warm-ish Friday night in October.
Bubala is located very centrally, just a few minutes walk from Oxford Street, Regent Street, and just around the corner from Carnaby Street.
The restaurant felt cosy inside, although the lighting was a bit on the dim side. It was fairly busy when we arrived. We were seated quickly, and shortly afterwards the server arrived with menus and complimentary still or sparkling water.
Bubala is a sharing plates type restaurant, serving a Mediterranean inspired cuisine. They had vegetarian or vegan set menus available for £45/person, but we opted to pick from the à la carte menu. We ordered flatbreads, hummus with chilli oil, baba ganoush, sweetcorn, halloumi with a fennel honey crust, and (surprisingly spicy) spanked cucumbers. To drink we enjoyed a bottle of white wine.
The food was delivered fairly quickly, but this led to an issue as the table wasn't really big enough for more than a couple of the sharing dishes, which were all quite large and flat. I ended up having to put my cutlery on the bench seat beside me, in order to have enough space for the water and wine glasses. My husband juggled cutlery.
Overall the food was tasty, and service good, and we'd return with veggie friends. If we returned we would consider ordering only a couple of dishes, and then ordering more when those were eaten, due to the table size. We ordered an extra flatbread and this arrived hot from the grill within a couple of minutes.
Myrtle
From the archive: We visited Myrtle in December 2022
We had a wonderful tasting menu with accompanying wine pairing to celebrate my birthday (21 again). Myrtle specialises in using Irish ingredients, and overall the presentation was excellent, without being pretentious, the ingredients and the food in general was definitely the star.
I don’t think they have a Michelin star yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they’d get one soon. The location was a bit odd, as it was very far away from any sort of public transport or major town centre. It doesn't matter much for us, as we’re not the type of people that like our valet parking.
The food itself, again, was superb. I particularly liked their additional black pudding starter, made with beef black pudding, instead of the traditional pork version. All the other dishes were great too. My favourite was possibly the sea bass with potato scales, and tasty sauce.
As with a tasting menu, we also went with the wine pairing, putting us back £167/person—excluding service charge (12.5%).
Of course, the reason we ended up here was due to Anna's (the head/executive chef) appearance as a judge on Master Chef.
Chez Tony
We were in Paris for the Paralympics, and on our first night we had time for a real meal. My wife suggested this restaurant as she had been here many times when visiting Paris for work. I had heard a lot about Chez Tony already.
When we arrived, we found the place empty inside. Tony came over from the terrace across the street nearly immediately and recommended that we sat outside, as the weather was great, and it was going to be stuffy inside. He was totally right after we (briefly) tried sitting inside first.
The menu is a blackboard that gets put on a seat close to you. They don't really do starters, and henceforth their menu is dinner. From snails and foie gras, via a beef tartare and cheese burger, the menu eventually leads to pieces of beef: filet mignon de porc (pork tenderloin), and escalope de veau. There is even fish and chips. My wife usually enjoys the cheese burger on her work trips.
The "piece de boucher" (butchers piece of beef) seemed the most appealing to us, and we ordered one each served medium rare. While dinner was being prepared our chosen carafe of a nice Côte du Rhône. I can't remember which one, but it was delicious, went well with our steaks, and it was empty by the time we finished our mains.
The steak was cooked perfectly medium rare, and the fries were nice and crispy. The peppercorn sauce had just the right amount of pepper to it.
We did find a little space for dessert, and shared a crème brûlée. Tony suggested, after tapping it with a fork, to wait a for minutes before enjoying it, so that the crème had some time to set. By this time, the restaurant had also filled up, and it was full when we left. Mostly locals too!
This is not a fancy restaurant, but one that does what it does well. No fuss, no snobby waiters, but good French cooking; and with a good ambiance.
Cafe Pacifico
We had visited Cafe Pacifico a few times in the past already, but we hadn't been back for a while, nor written up a review.
As it was a warm day, having Mexican food seemed like a good idea, and starting with a large margarita an even better one.
Cafe Pacifico has fairly standard items on their menu, not nearly as adventurous as Polanco where we dined a few weeks ago. We started our meal to share a couple of Empanadas, with a flavourful filling and a subtle chipotle salsa on the side.
By now our margarita was empty, and we ordered another one while waiting for our main, for which my wife picked the Chicken Chimichanga with black beans. A lovely dollop of guacamole and cream was perched on top. I chose the Sea Bass and King Prawn Tacos. These came in "tempura style" (i.e.: battered and fried), and were served with grilled pineapple, some red onions, and a slightly spicy mayonnaise.
After our mains, we were eventually given the dessert menu. We were quite eying up the churros, but it took so long for staff to return that by that time we had changed our mind and decided not to have any.
In my opinion, there could have been a little more spice and flavour in most of the dishes, and service wasn't the speediest. But it's still a reasonable option for a meal after a hard day of shopping in Covent Garden. We would also have benefitted from ordering a bottle of margaritas, instead of 4 individual large glasses.
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