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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