I’ve come to realise, as my colleague Sean Russell recently so eloquently put it, “dainty things are the most civilised”. Like him, I like small, concentrated coffees, half-pints and tapas. This is probably partly influenced by my mum’s move to Spain some years ago, where tradition – and the heat – necessitates small dishes, small drinks and big conversation. Perhaps it also stems from my indecision when consulting a menu; I want to try a bit of everything, and small plates are the perfect solution. Less is more, and all that.
When my mum came over to the UK to visit recently – after Covid kept us apart for more than a year, she is very enthusiastic (some would say overly, but not I) about a regular programme of enforced family time – I booked us in for some petiscos (Portuguese small plates) at Nuno Mendes’s Lisboeta on Charlotte Street, which opened to much fanfare in March. Mendes has been on the radar for some time, though fate had other ideas about him sticking around for very long. His first stint in London was at the much-remembered Bacchus in Hoxton, a sort of “modernist” gastropub. Then there was The Loft Project, an intimate and experimental supper club he ran out of his flat in Haggerston. He opened his first restaurant, Viajante, in Bethnal Green, in 2010, and it had a successful run, earning a Michelin star in its first year and retaining it until the restaurant closed in 2014.
