Archive for the ‘Spanish’ Category
V Rating: VVV My friend, J, the, and I went to see the beautiful, moving and original Pan’s Labyrinth on Thursday night at the Palace Academy cinema on Oxford Street. The movie started at 7pm, and I was determined to squeeze in dinner beforehand. However, I often find myself at a loss for a good restaurant at the top end of Oxford Street. We wandered past the small cluster of restaurants between the cinema and Taylor Square, ruling out food we’d eaten the previous night (Thai, Japanese) and somehow ended up in front of Cantina. As I’ve written about before, for many years I avoided tapas bars because I assumed that they wouldn’t be vegetarian friendly. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by both Kika and Mojos, but after Cantina I’m a convert. Their delicious food proved to me beyond a doubt that tapas is a vegetarian friendly affair.
Cantina offers some classic Spanish tapas dishes, but the menu also draws on Spain’s Mediterranean neighbours, Portugal, Greece and Morocco. We ordered the patas bravas, sauteed baby spinach with toasted slivered almonds and raisins, sauteed field mushrooms with garlic and parsley, and roasted beet salad with goats cheese dressing and walnuts.
Cantina’s food was simple, but beautifully prepared. The roast beet salad was a highlight. Using the goats cheese as a dressing and drizzling it over the beets was a great improvement on crumbling it into the salad, which is the way I’ve eaten this salad before.
The spinach sauteed in a slightly creamy broth was just beautiful with the sweet raisins and almonds, and had both of us reaching for more. I am a sucker for a potato dish, and judge tapas bars on the quality of their patas bravas (cubed, fried potatoes in a chili, onion and tomato sauce). Cantina gets full marks. The perfectly cubed, bite-sized potato was golden and crispy on the outside, and the tomato sauce was spicy without being too hot. In fact, these were so good I found myself (accidentally) eating straight from the tapas dish. Ahh, the social challenges of eating food off small plates. Fortunately J, the was too polite to comment.
We didn’t have time to try Cantina’s desserts, but with classic choices like creme catalana, churros and saffron poached pears it’s on my to do list for next time. I’ve wavered before Cantina on other occasions when I’ve been to the Verona or Academy, but always averred in favour of one of its neighbours. Perhaps it is the beautiful, but slightly sombre decor, quite different from the exuberance of some of Sydney’s other tapas bars. What a fool! The food is a cut above, and the service is friendly, professional and fast. It’s the perfect place for dinner before or after a movie at the Palace, but would also make a lovely choice for a lingering night with friends. Definitely a new favourite.
V Rating: VVV Mojos is just around the corner from where I live. Despite this, I’ve avoided going there out of a combined fear of Spanish food and of catching beautiful people germs. However, a couple of weeks ago my ex-housemate and his girlfriend suggested we go there for dinner on our way to a party. Talk about a revelation!
I’m starting to think that my fear of Spanish food is unfounded. There were 13 vegetarian tapas dishes on Mojos menu, plus three salads. Every dish that I tried was magnificent. We ordered five dishes and a salad between the four people. This prompted a withering lecture from the waitress (’I'm not sure if you guys have eaten here before, but people normally order 2-3 dishes each). Fortunately we didn’t take her advice, as the dishes we had were plenty satisfying.
My favourite dish was fresh, grilled artichoke drizzled in lemon and olive oil which had strong flavours and great texture. However, the cous cous balls, garlic potatoes, Spanish salad, fried eggplant and cheese were also high quality, fresh-flavoured dishes.
The one thing about Mojos is that is that it was chocka-block full and plenty noisy on Saturday. So make a booking or go hungry!
V-Rating: VVV Friday night I ended up in Kings Cross with a couple of my favourite friends. We’d spent a pleasant few hours at the Darlo Bar and were looking for dinner on our way to seeing The Vasco Era at Spectrum. It was one of those nights where everyone was at a crossroad. One friend was on her way to Brisbane to start a new job. A second friend was spending her last weekend in Australia before returning to her home in Cambodia and had invited along a friend who had just returned to Australia after a year overseas. Perhaps reflecting our transient state, we were at a loss to find a restaurant on Victoria Street. (There are a lot of restaurants on Victoria Street. This is no mean feat). We’d ruled out Italian, Thai, anything expensive, or anything with limited vegetarian options. That doesn’t leave much in King’s Cross. Fortunately, our bingo like approach to eating led us to Kika Tapas Bar. For a Spanish restaurant, Kika had a great range of veggie dishes. There were about ten vegetarian tapas options (with their own menu page, no less). We tried the eggplant in parsley butter, the patas bravas, the green beans in butter, garlic mushrooms, and the veggie tortilla. I liked every dish, but made sure to take a second serve of the patas bravas and eggplant. We washed it down with a jug of not-too-sweet sangria, which added a festive touch to the night. We had one heart-stopping moment just after we sat down. One my eagle-eyed friends noticed a small caveat on the back page of the menu: on Fridays and Saturdays each person had to spend $25 on food alone. We queried the waitress and were assured that ’so long as didn’t just order coffee’ we were fine. This kind of begged the question of why they put the rule on the menu in the first place, but sure enough there were no recriminations when the bill came and we were well under budget. Kika is handily situated just across the road from the Green Park Hotel. The decor is bright and cheery, and there are some large tables on footpath that are perfect for dinner on a warm night. Even with a full restaurant, the food came quickly and let us with plenty of time to amble off to see the band.
V Rating: VV I’ve never been to Spain but I’m told that it’s not a particularly veggie friendly place. I certainly view Spanish restaurants and tapas bars with a healthy amount of trepidation. This is why Captain Torres was a pleasant surprise. While the menu is dominated by meat and seafood, some simple touches make it clear that Captain Torres is aware that vegetarians exist, and has made an effort to cater for them. The main menu features a selection of entrees (including some veggie options), salads, bread and mains. Happily, there’s a vegetarian section of the menu, which includes a vegetarian paella and vegetable dish. The extensive tapas menu is largely based around meat and seafood, but does include three vegetarian options (deep fried potatoes in a chilli tomato sauce, grilled capsicum marinated in oil, and a delicious vegetarian tortilla). We were also able to get the entree garlic mushrooms in a creamy sauce upgraded to a tapas dish. The tapas dishes were tasty and a good size for sharing amongst a large group. The food can be washed down with a selection of beers, as well as sangria served in a half litre or litre option. The service was a little scattergun, and my group was puzzled to find that not only had we been over charged for our drinks, we’d also been charged for them twice. Captain Torres has a decidedly kitsch feel. The waiters are attentive and the narrow, crowded interior is decorated with ‘authentic’ Spanish touches. I can’t say whether it is like a little piece of Spain off George Street - but it wouldn’t surprise me to find something similar in the main streets of Madrid happily catering to the tourist market. All in all my visit to Captain Torres has inspired me to think that a visit to Spain might offer some genuinely good veggie moments. |
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