Jose on Bermondsey Street

Jose Pizarro’s new tapas and sherry bar, which opened a few weeks ago on Bermondsey Street, is great.  I’ll keep it short, as I went to a second tapas bar, Morito, for dinner after lunch here today and there’s only so much small plate action a girl can take.

First things first, I love Bermondsey Street – the buildings are beautiful and quirky and modern and mixed up and cool, and they come in great colours:

Very spring / summer ’11, this sort of putty colour.  Never did it for me in H&M, but it works on a building.

There’s a couple of very good pubs, the fantastic Garrison restaurant which serves a mean steak and chips:

gorgeous little boutiques, the Fashion and Textile Museum, a great looking Vietnamese coffee shop, the awesome London Glassblowing Studio on Bermondsey Street where they have beautiful objects such as this:

…and then you pull back a block and realise you’re a stone’s throw from The Shard.

which may become less hideous at night when it’s lit up, or when it’s finished, we shall see.  Anyway, Jose is on the corner of Bermondsey Street and Morocco Street.
 
I want to live in this building off Morocco Street.  I love Flatiron style buildings, they always remind me of wedges of cheese.

Get to Jose a few minutes before it opens at midday or you’ll have to queue.  We got there just in the nick of time as it was instantly rammed.

It’s very little, which I think is a good thing.  Easy to say when you’ve got a seat and aren’t having to queue.

Everything we ate was delicious and extremely well executed.

You get a little jar of crispy crunchy broad beans, or haba in Spanish.  At least I think that’s what our waiter said, I was pretty much tipsy from the moment I sat down and started necking white rioja.  I’m a totally crap daytime drinker but decided to embrace the concept of the siesta, what with it being a beautiful sunny day and all.

We had the tortilla, which was made with honey, walnut, aubergine and blue cheese.  Normally I like my tortilla’s pretty much straight up potato, onion, no chaser – but this really was delicious.

Then we had some more wine and some stuff and I think judging from my photos these are almost definitely prawns with garlic and chilli:

They look like they’re spooning, don’t they?  Very romantic.

Also some Iberica ham.  Salt and fat, salt and fat – what is not to love about salt and fat?

Bread and tomato.  Jose’s rendition was faultless – super fresh tomato, clean flavours, perfect slightly soggy bread with fruity olive oil on it.  So simple and so pleasing, I could have eaten another five portions.  I should have eaten another five portions because I can’t remember what else we ate…Oh well, them’s the breaks.

I do know that after a very good caffe con leche we went and sat in the park and stuffed St John custard donuts in our gobs, which was the perfect end to a perfect morning.

Then off home for a siesta before doing it all again…..

Maltby Street

You know that feeling that you’re the last to know about something?  I hate that feeling.  Like on Popbitch when someone would post ‘corn’, a scathing response to some gossip that was as old as the repeal of the Corn Laws.  (I secretly liked ‘corn’ as a diss – it meant those two years doing GCSE history weren’t wasted after all.)

Maltby Street’s been on my radar for ages, since my old flatmate Slash (not that Slash, though I did meet that Slash in LA years ago and he was terribly nice) mentioned it, in a ‘I’m surprised you don’t know about Maltby Street when all you ever do is talk about your next meal,’ kind of way.

Strictly speaking I’m probably not the last to know, as Maltby Street still feels like a well-kept secret and is joyously un-rammed, unlike Borough Market, which now permanently feels like Thorpe Park on  August Bank Holiday weekend.

The nearest tube is London Bridge, home of THE MASSIVE CHARMLESS SHARD, which is not any prettier close up than from a distance.

Maltby Street actually refers to two stretches of railway arches about 5 minutes walk from London Bridge, which house some fantastic food retailers / wholesalers. 

We started with a coffee in the sunshine outside Monmouth Coffee.  There’s such a relaxed atmosphere – it’s very low-key and communal – couples, families, grannies, fashionable Scandinavians, the odd super-hipster with silly glasses and pale pink pedal pushers. 

We walked past these rather impressive goat’s curd and garlic confit crostini, 50p a pop, at 40 Maltby Street.

and past various arches owned by Lassco, the architectural salvage company, with random things like these old radiators

and these cinema chairs for sale:

Among these arches are fabulous little shops like Mons, which sells delicious French cheeses

and Fern Verrow

who sell biodynamically farmed seasonal produce like these plump, perfect broad beans

and these slim fennel, which look almost alien:

If you then walk through to Druid Street, you get to this lot:

More fantastic meat, sausages, cheeses:

and breads:

Most exciting for me are these guys:

The St John Bakery, which is only open to the public on a Saturday, sells their fabulous bread:

 
but more importantly one of my favourite things in the world, the St John custard donut.

I know it’s pathetic to post two such similar pictures, but I honestly love these donuts so much I couldn’t bear not to put both on here…

I’m coming back next week to spend some time here with the King of Donuts, Justin – if I don’t die of excitement in the mean time.

After our little adventure, we rushed back over to Bermondsey Street for 11.55, to queue outside Jose in time for midday opening, more of which forthwith…