Dehesa - pinxos that pinch your pocket

Would you believe I ended up at Dehesa because at the street festival "A Taste of Spain" (taking place on Regent Street) you couldn't get a single glass of bloody wine ANYWHERE and in order to nab the most microscopic piece of jamòn you had to queue for 45 minutes at one of endless regional stands whilst anxious ladies thrust brochures up your nose under the sweltering sun. Taste of Spain? Waste of Spain if you ask me.

So anyway, Dehesa.... well they certainly saw the Brits coming. One of an endless newish crop of pinxos, tapas, cicchetti, over-priced tiny grilled things on plates that in Europe cost about 2 euros - type bars. The classic tortilla is £4. Yes, a combination of egg and potatoes. £4. For a quarter slice. Good? Hmm... if you can't knock this one up better at home...

The food is good, don't get me wrong, it's just far from exceptional and lacks the heartiness and richness that real Spanish tapas can impart despite the small portions . A bowl of hard boiled quail's eggs with rock salt and paprika at £5.50 was a bit too gimmicky for me, when they could have done something incredible had they poached them and burst them over some fresh asparagus for example. The salt to quail's eggs ratio was enough to have the health police rushing round for a cholesterol check too, you could have baked a whole fish in the salt, there was that much of it.

I had mozzarella with olive tapenade and crostini. The sort of little dish that you get in Europe for about 5 euros and comes with a giant oozing cheese and four or five thick slices of grilled bread slathered with the black stuff. This was all twee and dinky, wee mozarellas of ok quality and two tiny crostini on a slice of bread that could double for a wheat thin spread with what can only be described as a "dainty smattering" of tapenade. As though it were marmite.

The biggest joke was the drink however. Davy's wine bar knows its stuff when it comes to serving sherry. A decent glass can be obtained there for a fiver with little fuss or show. Here it took a good 15 minutes for a glass of fino to arrive and when it did, Raquel, who'd ordered the more expensive Manzanilla Pasada, had almost a third less in her glass than I did with my Ximenez . When she enquired as to the reason, we were fobbed off with a pretentious "its about the intensity of flavour and how it is imparted in a smaller quantity." To which Raquel, a Spanish born-and-raised lady with considerable experience in the wine deparment simply scoffed "so, I pay more, and get less?" Then looked at me as it to say "can you imagine a waitress saying that to some crusty sherry-producing farmer in a smoky Andalucian bar and getting away with it alive?" TO which I could only cringe...

Now Polpo on Beak Street on the other hand... super cichetti!

Polpo - aperitivo a go-go

Polpo touts itself as a Venetian bacaro in London. I've never been to Venice, so far be it for me to say how authentic it may or may not be, but frankly it looks just like an enoteca to me... It serves the Italian equivalent of tapas, "cicheti" the kind of small, taster dishes you'd find in any good wine bar in the major Italian cities.

The place is always buzzing, it's worth booking from Thursday to Saturday and don't expect to find a quiet table. The one truly authentic Italian element to this place is the noise level, and that's without the massive family christening parties with screaming babies.

I visited in the quieter hours after three, with a vague hangover that needed nursing. One Aperol spritz later and I was struggling to decide on only three dishes (these are hard economic times) from the menu as it frankly all sounds good.

I began with Spratti in Saor - marinated sprats in a citrussy, salty sauce served on small crostini. Gone in a flash, they whet my appetite perfectly. C. had the wild mushroom piadina, which was stuffed to the gills with a variety of funghi, although the bread was a touch chewy and dry.

For some reason that confounds me, I opted to follow with cotechino, essentially a type of sausage made from pork, fatback and pork rind, usually stuffed into a pig's trotter. I've yet to meet an Italian who eats this outside of New Year's eve where it is considered traditional and symbolic of good luck. It was probably since I'd missed out this New Year on my pig's trotter helping that I felt a twinge of nostalgia. It was, in fact, delicious. Nothing like the squidgy, boiled-to-misery salted mush I'm used to having in a drunken state towards midnight on the 31st, but delicate and handsomely flavoured with pine nuts and savoy cabbage and mustard.

C. had the pork belly, with radicchio and hazelnuts to balance out the sweetness and add bite. Equally tasty. 

The big mistake? The fritto misto. Not that it was bad, it was crispy enough and not terribly greasy. But after narfing through all the rest, the portion just didn't seem so small anymore and the squid, inevitably, had that rubber band texture that I couldn't really stomach after pig's feet and, yes, another Aperol spritz.

Neverthelss, between the two of us, we pretty much polished our plates. No sign of a venetian either in the kitchen or in the bar though, which made me wonder at the tenuous connection to the city of water... But the wine list told another tale, with a great selection of big and lesser-known northern Italian producers. Shame the hangover had me stuck on the Aperol, but I shall return to get my nashers round a Tocai soon...

Prices are around £3-£6  per dish, three dishes makes an ample meal.

Polpo

41 Beak Street 
London W1F 9SB. 
020 7734 4479.