For those of you not armed with smart phones you need to come out of the platform 0 exit and pass Mcdonalds on your left, duck into the first ginnel (southerners, this means alleyway) and opposite Camino you will see Pepito http://www.camino.uk.com/pepito, a bar approximately the size of my living room - we reckoned at it's busiest there were 24 people in there including 3 staff. Warning - Pepito doesn't open until 6pm so we were forced back over to Camino (same owner) for a cheeky glass of white.
Camino has a great selection on wine and appears to do food - and as soon as the novelty of Pepito has worn off we'll give it a go.
Back across the courtyard and the place had livened up, it has quite an authentic Spanish tapas feel to it - maybe it's the fact that everyone is crammed in, every drink comes with a different 'tapita' and it also has the unfussy worn in look of a winery tasting room. The table tops are made from barrel lids which does make you feel a bit like a small child permitted to sit at the table with the adults and the sherry menu had equally youth-giving properties to the seekers of fine quality drinks that we are.
The sherry is divine - something for every taste here and if you don't like sherry there are plenty of other beers and wines on the list. For those interested in learning about sherry I'd recommend the flights, we didn't try these as FFTT was only staying for a quick one before the train home. Prices are reasonable but be prepared to empty your wallet once you start on the food - they have managed to create some genuinely interesting cold tapas.
The food
We started with some olives, believing in our good intentions to have a 'proper dinner'. However, the lure of the tapas was too good and we had to try 'Falso Cojonudo' - translated as egg and chips. Having seen the kitchen (a work top and a fridge) we weren't sure this was possible. What arrived was, quite frankly, a work of art and was delicious too. This dish wouldn't have been out of place in a decent restaurant. The 'yolk' of the 'egg' was a piquillo pepper sauce and the 'white' was truffle foam, the chips were matchstick sized and on the side was some delicious chorizo.
At this point TH arrived so we ordered a few more dishes for him. Pork scratchings - perfectly crispy but needed more seasoning, Anchovy skewers - fantastic, and Oysters with lemon air (a suitably pretentious name for the equally pretentious lemon foam). Pretentious the name may have been but this was the first time I had eaten an Oyster and was willing to try a second - perfect acidic balance which took the edge off the salty fishiness and was fantastic with the manzanilla we were sipping.
All in all it was a rather merry evening - I imagine that those, like myself, who are not accustomed to drinking sherry would leave a lot lighter of wallet but in equally good spirits!
