Cambio de Tercio: Disappointing return

Just a short update (and photo-less: this meal wasn't meant to lead to a post...) to temper the glowing report on our first visit at Cambio de Tercio. 

It was obviously too good to be true.

The jamon, while having good flavour, was depressingly far from the delicacy the real thing can be (our memories of the real thing, during a recent trip to Spain, still painfully vivid). This was so hard and stringy (and also poorly cut) that we enquired whether maybe it was from a paleta (front leg), which can be a little harder. No, it's jamon, they assured us. So we guess they had just picked the worst bits: thank you.

A John Dory was presented with its flaccid skin and the accompanying squid wasn't properly cleaned.

The waiter made a lot of difficulty with our choice of wine (for information, a Quercus 2005 at £63 selling about £20 retail). 'I'm sorry, we have run out, why don't you get this one which is very similar?'. 'How can it be very similar, it's a 2010 vintage?'. 'Ah OK, how about this one?'. 'It's also 2010...'. 'OK, maybe I have the Quercus, let me see'. And indeed, probably after a search that he hadn't relished, he came back with the bottle...whose content arrived only much much later to our uncomfortable table, after the jamon had already been served.

And so on...

After this experience, when in a 'Spanish mood' we'll try some of the other choices in London. 

Or maybe, we'll use the savings made on wine markups and we'll fly direct to Spain...We noticed a disturbingly excessive £80 price tag on a Crianza Pago de Carraoviejas (a Ribera del Duero), when in Malaga we had the Reserva version of the same for fifty euros (40 pounds)!

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Cambio de Tercio (London): Tapas!

(Visited July 2012)



  (Added 23/09/12: see our much more negative more recent experience)

Trying to liven up a grey London Summer day with some Spanish fire...

Here we are at Cambio de Tercio, for an all-tapas lunch that was pleasant, in a relaxed and straightforward way, a series of  colorful and balanced dishes, dishes with a clear personality that also showed culinary skill and interest in presentation. Like these beetroots:


And there were some particularly striking dishes that went beyond pleasant: the Gazpacho Andaluz, vividly coloured, fresh and intense, refined by the presence of a lovely bogavante (lobster),



the pulpo a la Gallega, very soft, plump, in a luscious potato cream (we've had far rougher versions in Galicia: this was classy cooking),



and the tomatoes 8-hour cooked in Pedro Ximenes with a basil 'tartare', the tomatoes a delicious concentration of sweet flavour, the tartare (spherified basil) once again providing the touch that elevates this dish far above rustic or home-made



We accompanied the meal with an excellent fino,



at the same time rounder and more structured than the most popular supermarket brands (which we also find perfectly pleasant, by the way).



The prices are very reasonable, with pretty large tapas from £6-7 to £12 for the most luxurious ingredients, and mains (which we didn't  have) in the £15-£20 range. You can easily have a satisfactory lunch for £30 or so if you choose well. We are told that it can get very busy here at dinner or in certain periods, but on this occasion there were just a few tables, well attended to by an efficient and attentive waitress.

Spanish cuisine is one of the most appealing in the world and London is lucky to have such a good representation of it at Cambio de Tercio, a place where there is evident care for ingredient quality and expert treatment of them. If we lived at reasonable distance, we'd be there often.


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