Café España - What A Find! (Restaurants in London in general)

Member Name: Nibelung

Product:	Restaurants in London in general
Date:	28/09/02 (977 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Comprehensive menu, Friendly staff, Surprisingly good value

Disadvantages: Can't be booked, It's all in the timing!

Want to relive your latest gastronomic blowout from your Spanish holiday?

Want a recommendation for a West End restaurant with suburban prices?

Want a pre- or post-theatre venue?

Well if you can answer, "Yes" to any of the above, have I got the place for you!

Café España, situated at the western end of Soho's Old Compton Street doesn't look much, just a shop-front width with a single door and a menu outside. The pedestrian traffic in the evening does not really encourage leisurely perusal of the menu in the window, but that doesn't worry me. Now that I've been there several times, why would I want to wait outside anyway?

Given its popularity and central position, it's lucky for the Café España that it goes back quite a long way from the pavement and that it has an upstairs as well.

As far as I know, you can't book*. After all, anyone who can fill their restaurant twice over at most points in the evening has no need of such complications, like people failing to turn up or being delayed.

*We tried once only to be rebuffed, and haven't since.

The interior isn't much to write home about, but the candle-lit tables downstairs all go to make the place atmospheric, as does the closeness of the tables. The upstairs isn't quite so nice but it's the luck of the draw I'm afraid.

Even so, you can always make your own romantic atmosphere, through a Rioja-fuelled haze!

Despite its name, it's a full restaurant, so it's a bit puzzling why they came up with the one they did.

The staff is friendly and genuinely Spanish-speaking, unlike some European restaurants, where the owners seem to think that anyone looking a bit foreign will do - after all, the British can't speak Spanish, no es verdad?

This gives me the impression that it is mainly a family-run business, if the lack of turnover of waiters is anything to go
by. We once went there during the week when business was slacker, to be told "I'll put you in the window - that way we'll look full, and perhaps then I can go home earlier!"

Anyhow, that's enough of the cosmetics - let's get to business.

This is a Spanish Restaurant serving real Spanish food, and if the number of ex-pat Spaniards amongst the clientele is anything to go by, it's highly rated.

As you would expect, an à-la-carte menu vies with a long list of tapas for your custom.

I have dined from both, and both are excellent. Some of the tapas are just different-sized starters. For example, the tapa-sized tortilla, (Spanish Omelette) is enormous, and you begin to wonder if the waiter hasn't brought you a main course by mistake.
Rather than reel off a massive list, I'll talk you through a couple of the main meals that I've had there, and then through last night's tapas.

A TYPICAL STARTER

HUEVOS FLAMENCOS. (Eggs, flamenco style) A large and very hot earthenware dish filled with what is best described as hot ratatouille, with chunks of chorizo (spicy sausage) thrown in for good measure. So what about the eggs? Two of these are broken and spread on top. Then the whole shebang gets grilled briefly to set the eggs. Accompany with a basket of bread for dunking and you're off. One sauce-splashed shirt later, looking more like a Jackson Pollock* original, I'm ready for my next course.

*Strangely enough, that could be rhyming slang for what I said when I did it!

A TYPICAL MAIN COURSE

Strangely enough, I'm less loquacious about the main courses, and I suspect that this is because I'm feeling quite replete after the enormous starter. I do remember having Higado con Bacon once (liver and bacon, but no, it doesn't come with school mashed potato, thank God!). Whilst I'm in an "offal" mood, the Riñones al Jerez (kidney
s in sherry) makes a pleasantly different meal. Of course, there is a choice of accompanying vegetables, and here I would perhaps ask them to bring us a tapa-sized portion of Patatas Bravas (spicy spuds).

Fish dishes are also available, and my wife had a terrific grilled salmon there to. Bacalao a la Viscaina (Basque-style Cod) is also delicious.

Seafood is also taken care of, with the likes of prawns, octopus, squid, cuttle-fish, and mussels.

Of course, if you're not a great lover of "the stinking rose", as the Romans used to call garlic, then grilled meats are probably your best bet, with lamb chops and a variety of steaks to choose from.

DESSERTS

Not my forte I'm afraid, but they do look nice. If pressed, I'll have their version of Crème Caramel, (simply known as "Flan" is Spanish). What an economic language Spanish is. "Do you have any crème caramel today?" becomes "Hay flan hoy"?

OH THOSE TAPAS!

Last night, my wife and I were booked to see Mamma Mia!, conveniently also in Old Compton Street. We arrived at the Café España at around 7:00, and by the look of it, were the last to find a table without waiting.

We ordered 5 dishes, Chorizo al Viño (sausage in wine), Albondigas (meat balls), Patatas Bravas (spicy potatos), Tortilla (THAT Spanish Omelette!), Riñones al Jerez (kidney in sherry, again!).

Coupled with a bottle of "house white", which turned out to be Torres Viña Sol, no mean achievement in its own right, and a "damned fine" cup of coffee, the bill was £30 before leaving a tip.

A whole row of staff offering "Buenas Noches" later, and we were out on the street, nursing full stomachs and ready to hunker down into our seats for a nap - no such luck with Mamma Mia! though.

My advice - get there early or late, but not in between. They are open on Sundays, and we've been there la
te after going to the "improv" nights at the Comedy Store. I've never yet had to queue, but it's only a matter of time, I suppose, so why am I telling you?

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