Now that I’ve moved out of central London and have to watch the last train home, dinner can become an “exciting” affair.  I have to weigh up if just one more bite is worth a potentially longer (and significantly more expensive) train home.

An inviting ambience is even more important to convince me to stay longer than I would have planned.

So the meal started off with some interesting plates implying half and half.  The wholemeal bread was crunchy outside, soft and pliable inside.  Delightful with some olive oil on the side.

Starters

Jamon iberico cortado a mano, hand carved ham from free-roaming acorn-fed Iberico pig.  Excellent and succulent.  Deep ham taste with a nutty flavour.  A pretty penny though to pay for the implied idyllic scene of Spanish pig farms carefully letting their pigs roam through the acorn-strewed forest undergrowth.  I imagine that reality is that they are shoved a pile of nuts among their usual diet of drivel.  Then again, that is not so different from what others may think of my office job as popularised by too many TV shows.  The reality is office life is usually boring fraught with moments of occasional extreme excitement.  If you don’t know where I work, you can try, I’ll leave you in the dark.  I like a little mystery.  When conjured by me. Not on me.

With tomato bread.  The tomatoes were some of the best I had ever had.  Almost seemed like sashimi.  Delicate and meaty on lightly toasted bread.  Excellent.

Crujientes de quesos, toffee flavoured filo pastry filled with a blend of Spanish cheese.  Delicious crunchy and fulsome flavour.  It was meaty without being too overpowering set off by a crunchy case.

Croquetas de jamon, Iberico ham croquettes.  Bursting with ham inside complimented by cheese and flour case.  With each bite it was almost like you were taking a mouthful of the (cooked) inside of a pig, in a good way.  It had that much porkiness shining through.

Pimientos de padron, padron peppers with Maldon salt.  Sadly a bit too bland which was a bit strange as I thought that seasoning this with salt carefully would have lifted things up easily.  Although perhaps they were looking to leave that particular choice to the individual diner.  So I would give these a miss if I came again.

Carabinero, huevos y patatitas, Spanish carabinero prawn with eggs and potatoes.  An example of how prawn juice can lift things up.  Some squeezed brain and offal juice really spices things up sometimes.  Depending on which creature you are enjoying the inside of, or course.  Monkey might be a bit too close to home.  Potato and egg with prawn, who knew that things could come together so well?  Heavy umami flavours, soft omelette and crunchy potatoes combined to create a creamy, complex and immensely satisfying dish.

To give you a visual representation, this is where the juice comes from.

Mains

Lubina salvaje con pure de patas ratte, wild sea bass potato ratte mash, smoked aubergine and snow peas.  A rather garbled order led to an interesting placing of this dish.

Smoked aubergine on the side kind of looked lonely.  The true order was a side of chips on the side.  Not the aubergine.  No matter.  The fish was decent, cooked the right side of cooked, nicely charred skin, flavours were a bit too light to me though and it was a bit too bony.  Although this meant that I got to enjoy the site of my usually prim and proper dining friend trying to discreetly remove the bones from between his teeth.  That was highly amusing (for me).

Cochinlioo de segovia asado, roasted suckling pig and frisee salad.  The pig was the reason to come to this restaurant.  Delicious skin and meltingly fat pork.  A  meaty main course.  The pork was very fatty.  Juicy but fatty.  Succulent but fatty.  Perhaps a bit too fatty for me but then again that is probably the whole point.  Might have been better gorging myself on the starters.

Dessert

Coulant de turron, nougat coulan, Jiljona nougat from Alicante.  An interesting demonstration of melting soft nougat.  When you cut in, liquid started to pool out.  Great together with the ice cream.  The deflation was not too abrupt though, unlike people in the office I have witnessed who have had their bubble burst (to great amusement).

Chocolate tart with vanilla ice cream.   The chocolate tart was sadly a bit too stoggy and lacked layers and sophistication in its taste profile.  Instead, it just tasted like biting into a block of melted chocolate with flour.  The crumble on the side was nice although would have been better as a base.

Latte.  Tasting like it came out a Nespresso machine this was nothing special sadly.  Although I should have guessed as most restaurants have rather unremarkable coffee.

So coming to the end, my new way of weighing up a restaurant is whether the meal is really worth it.  So many factors to consider now as compared to when I lived in central London.  Life was simpler then.  So dinner at Hispania was “exciting” in a way that I can recommend.  As it was tempting enough to make spending the night in the city a potential option to consider.

Score

A quiet eating 8/10.

Dinner (3 courses equivalent) was GBP70 per person excluding drinks and service.

Hispania

72-74 Lombard Street
EC3V 9AY