moro, london ec1

 

my friend dom was in london and wanting to catch-up, my job was to find somewhere we could relax over our drinks and enjoy some good food.

moro is a fabulous restaurant that specialises in spanish/ north african cuisine, referring to it as “the marriage between saffron and cinnamon”. owned by sam & sam clark who have authored two accessible books that are much-splattered and used in my kitchen moro cookbook and casa moro), it is a comfortable place to be – a lively atmosphere, friendly staff and good quality simple dishes.

the bread they serve as you sit down has an earthy yeasty taste and a texture that makes you glad your teeth are strong enough to get through the chewy crust! we all wanted the charcoal grilled squid with zhoug to start but i was the lucky winner. melt in the mouth squid with a clean-tasting green and fiery sauce to accompany it – perfect! other starters were mojama (dry-cured tuna) with piquillo pepper and caperberry salad (very good and i have been inspired me to buy some mojama and try using it myself) and aubergine, mint and chilli salad with labneh.

my main of charcoal-grilled lamb with aubergine pilav was full of flavour with wonderfully tender lamb. the courgettes cooked in yoghurt and mint with pine nuts that accompanied a wood-roasted chicken were excellent and i need to see if that recipe is in any of their books. the crunchy crackling that came as part of white pork with fried goat’s horn peppers and saffron chickpeas was also superb and definitely worth stealing from someone else’s plate.

i hadn’t visited moro for almost 2 years and i really hope that i’ll be back sooner for my next visit. in the meantime i’ll get their books out and hope that the home-made versions work just as well.