Displaying items by tag: tapas

Critically acclaimed Moro has little sisters and now we have one of them - Morito - living at the end of our road. With Brawn at the other end of the road I have hit the foodie jackpot for restaurants moving to this area of London, although at suffolkfoodie we rarely have deep enough pockets to go there more than once. Give me the pie and mash shops for dedication to service (about a hundred years of it) and value (still £3.50 for a home made lunch) But award-winning Moorish cuisine, rooted in Spanish and North African influences is hard to ignore, and the owners of Moro - Sam and Sam Clark - were locals once, they lived in the area too. So we booked our table, starting with three glasses of sherry (not each - there were three of us) advised by a waitress from Jerez, and quickly into a starter of dakos - a salad of tomatoes and soaked rye bread with fresh cheese, olives and anchovies. We then went through the tapas: octopus with fava puree, a succulent turbot steak with sherry vinegar and paprika, salt cod with purple potatoes, rabbit deep fried to a dry crunch with rosemary and moscatel vinegar, labneh with chillies and broad beans, and beetroot sweet herb borani with walnuts. It's all about the fresh quality ingredients and the interesting flavours here. The dessert we shared was filo pastry with gum mastic labneh and rhubarb. All of this and a glass of wine each amounted to £40 a head including service. I think we can afford to go back.

• beetroot, sweet herb borani and walnuts £6
• labneh, chillies and broad beans £7
• chicarrones - crispy pork belly £7.5
• dessert - filo, gum mastic labneh and rhubarb £7
• starter - dakos, fresh cheese, olives and anchovies £6.5
• salt cod, purple potato, quail egg and alioli £12
• the salt and spices on the table when we arrived
• turbot, sherry vinegar and paprika
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Maria Crick has always wanted to run her own restaurant and now her dream has come true.  The new Cafe del Mar in Bury St Edmunds offers a tapas/meze menu with 3 dishes for £10.  At the moment it is BYO wine, allowing for a very affordable night out.

• inside the cafe
• greek salad
• panna cotta with blackberries
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I love you Tracey - I buy the Independent on Saturday just for you. Now I've got that out of the way let's see where she went. This time she came to eat in Beccles, at Upstairs at Baileys, and gave it four stars (out of five) for the food. With lots of seafood, stews and casseroles and chefs brought over from Barcelona to cook it all. Haven't been there yet but will be going there very soon - when I've remembered where Beccles is. 

I have just visited a school where there was a Spanish cook in the staff room, making home-made meatballs and salad for the teachers as they came in for breaks. It's a long time since I have been in a staff room but this one has changed my mind...from nescafe and cheap biscuits to tapas - 7am to 5pm every day.

What a boring final, but good excuse for a family food event - supporting Spain with jugs of Sangria and various Tapas (a kind of English tapas - whatever you can make without going to the shops.) Had more fun with intermmittent singing of Y Viva Espana and flamenco music and eventually, finally, yawn - the goal.