1 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BZ www.eneko.london
The last time he walked through the door of One Aldwych Nick was going to cash a cheque to enlarge his overdraft. Now who remembers cheques?
It’s all very chic and stylish and not perhaps what you’d expect from a Basque restaurant, places that one fondly imagines are always rough, manly joints where everything is cooked over live coals by men in berets who only talk in x’s and z’s.
The weekend brunch menu presents a compact choice of dishes mostly designed to be shared (I know, I know). We wanted to kick off our drinking with a Golden Mary – spice-infused vodka, golden tomato juice and celery foam – but they’d just run out of the juice, so we had a Bloody Mary instead and very good it was too. And with that bringing us back to life, we ordered dishes with abandon. With four of us at table we could get a good spread.
In the Basque country, this pairing is usually eaten with a glass of Txakoli, a low alcohol and slightly fizzy white wine, but by now I was deep into a bottle of red, apparently made by Eneko and his uncle, that was powerful and rich. Saturday was looking up.
Our vegetarian hostage was a bit miffed to find out that Gernika Beans – Black beans, Savoy cabbage, piparrak, sourdough toast – was sold out, but loved the fish soup with hake, mussels and clams. All of us, meat eaters and wusses alike, enjoyed the very vegetarian crispy corn talo with heritage tomatoes and herbs – the Chelsea Flower Show on a plate – with the tomatoes zinging with fresh acidity against the talo’s mealy bite.
Scrambled eggs, sautéed potato, jamon, sourdough toast is one of those things the
Spanish do triumphantly, it’s just so delicious. I put it down to their decadently frying the potatoes in olive oil, but whatever it is it always works so well; the eggs were softly scrambled, the jamon a salty lick that wove through them and the bread, unusually for toasted sourdough, wasn’t a doomed battle to either cut or chew.
Spring onion salad was news to me, I’d never thought of eating them this way all shredded up and dressed, but this was exactly what the steak demanded and I shall now be making this one at home. The fine chips we ate with our fingers, sorry I blame chef’s uncle’s wine for that, but they were very easy to go mad on.
And finally a Torrija – Basque vanilla sponge with caramel crumble ice cream. This was rather like French Toast, the sponge soaked in sweetened milk and fried. I think sometimes the Spanish would, if possible, fry everything in sight but it works, so why complain?
Indeed, there was nothing to complain about. The Eneko brunch made my weekend start with a bang and, emerging into the Strand late afternoon, I felt the best I had leaving the building since I convinced a rookie cashier to let me have that £1000.
Brunch
Saturday 11.30am – 3pm
Sunday 11.30am – 3.30pm
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