Lobos …spanish restaurant in London

In http://www.theguardian.com/ by @marinaoloughlin; Photograph: Sophia Evans.

I’m genuinely about to scarper. If it weren’t for the pal being on the tube, and therefore unable to see my panicked texts shrieking, “We need to go somewhere else fast!”, you wouldn’t have seen me for dust. It’s a long time since I’ve been anywhere so initially unprepossessing. The address is Borough High Street, but I don’t expect to find Lobos squatting under a railway bridge where dustballs of rat fur and urine skitter. The entrance is a dark maw, unadorned apart from a pegboard sign announcing, “MEAT & TAPAS: the wolf is always evil if you only listen to Red Riding Hood

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My Spanish restaurant bellwether is the croqueta. The finest in London remain those from José Pizarro, a miraculous combination of wibbly, jamón-studded bechamel and fragile, physics-defying shell. Lobos’ are huge, stout, dense; tattooed bouncers to Pizarro’s ballet dancers, rammed not only with ham, but also with smoked bacon and chorizo for good measure. It’s a porcine orgy. We’ve by now ordered more wine (an excellent white rioja), but are ranting so much it has been ignored. Then something happens that I’ve never previously encountered: Jaume replaces our half-drunk glasses with fresh, crisp, full ones. “These,” he says, “were getting warm.” See? New best friend.

The food here is the pearl in the gnarly oyster.

I couldn’t be more surprised at how much I like eccentric, dark, noisy Lobos. I want to fall out of here post-midnight and not remember leaving, reeling from sherry and fine pork (shame it closes at 11pm). It’s a dive, sure. But it’s a delicious one.

Read more… here! by @marinaoloughlin

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