Barrafina

Frith street Soho,
(Lunch 12/04/07)

Catalan style tapas bar from the owners of Fino in Fitzrovia. This lunch was slightly bigger than intended but we were having fun sampling the menu. I highly recommend this place as the food was of the highest quality without being overworked or falling into any of the other traps that chefs fall for when serving simple food.

We had:

1. Mixed meat (lomo, jamon de jabugo, Chorizo etc great quality)
2. Tomato toast (essentially white toast rubbed with garlic and butter covered in a tomato sauce, a classic dish but unusually good)
   
3. Totilla Jamon and Spinach (very nice combo, would like to know how they make it though as the tortilla was like a container stuffed with the other ingredient as opposed to everything being mixed up together as is more usual)
   
4. Deep fried red mullet (fresh red mullet, deep fried with a lemon on the side, what could be better)
   
5. Tellines (tiny little clams that have been fried with butter and olive oil. this was the only disappointment as they had not put them in cold water to spit out any sand i.e. the clams where gritty)
   
6. Chorizo on toast w/aioli and rocket (mmmm)
   
7. Green salad (need that at some point!)
   
8. Morcilla w/Piquillo Peppers (essentially black budding. Served on a simple boiled potato with a relish of the peppers. Did not really work for me as the morcilla/pepper combo was not really strong/sweet/rich enough to cope with the potato)
   
9. Cotelleta (lam chops done the Spanish way, simple beautiful)
   

We had a bottle of Red with all of this a Mas Donis 2005 from Montsant (Garnacha and Tempranillo) recommended by the patron!

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