Telephone: 020 7735 6388
Address: Rebato's, 169 South Lambeth Road, London SW8.
Full tapas for two, with wine and service, around £60.
Great holiday meals, like great holiday sexual partners, rarely look as appetising beneath the dull light of a British sky as they do abroad. At home, that lovely bit of stuff you picked up on the beach turns swiftly back into the plumber from Dalston they always were; likewise the omelette aux fines herbes that transported you at your country table in Bordeaux is, back home, just a bunch of beaten eggs with green flecks of plant matter in it. Because the pleasure of food is not just about taste or texture or even appearance. It is about context: the view from your table, the smells of the street, your mood, the waiters insulting you in a language you do not understand while rewarding you with a broad grin.
And yet, for all that, we will still attempt to recapture the experience. Or, at least, I will. Recently, I spent a luscious, sun-kissed weekend in Seville. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I ate the best tapas I have ever come across, standing at the bar of a wood-clad joint down by the river, where they scribble your order on paper napkins and the dishes arrive almost as quickly as the words escape your mouth. There were fresh, plump prawns in a chilli garlic butter so fizzingly hot you could fry bread in it. There were slices of sweet soft ham, and cuts of chorizo. There was a pungent bowl of rice thick with chunks of pork and a plate of capers the size of cherries. It was midnight, the town was still buzzing and, with a glass of fino sherry by my hand, I was more than half way to the land of pissed. So, just your average absolutely brilliant night out then.
Which, of course, I wanted to recreate when I got home. Britain is not short on tapas bars. They came back with us in our luggage from a million package holidays. But there is a huge difference between a place calling itself a tapas bar because it happens to serve up small platefuls of over-priced over-cooked calamari, and the real thing. A request for recommendations from friends led me to Rebato's, an old stager on a stretch of London's South Lambeth Road, which could be called Little Spain or Little Portugal, depending upon which Iberian café you happen to be in at the time.
Rebato's became famous a few years back when an agent from MI6, whose headquarters are just up the road in Vauxhall, lost his laptop computer there. It happened to be stuffed full of secrets. That has to be a good sign: our Mr James Bond was so relaxed at Rebato's, indeed so completely laid back, that years of intensive training simply melted away into the bottom of a glass of thick Rioja. Either that, or he was just a crap spy.
Clearly Rebato's think it's a good tale, because the walls are festooned with framed newspaper cuttings about the story. Those garish Sun headlines aside, the place does have the right look about it. A heavy wooden door gives way to a wide room with a colourful Andalucian tiled floor. There is ornate cornicing on the walls and ceilings and, on the evening we were there, small children were running around way past their British bed time, which is exactly what you would hope to see in a tapas place in Spain.
I went with my friend Rich, with whom I have consumed a lot of tapas in and around Barcelona. We ordered a glass of fino each and considered the menu. It is lengthy but not overly so. For comparison with my Seville experience we ordered a plate of Serrano ham and some prawns in garlic. Both were absolutely fine: the thin slices of ham were rich and chewy. The prawns in the hot, garlicky butter were pert, plump little things that went down marvellously with hunks of bread.
But, of course, the holiday factor was still there. Neither seemed as good as the equivalents I'd eaten in southern Spain. I remembered thinking at the time that a British restaurant would probably never be able to get away with serving ham the way it was served in Seville, on health and safety grounds. There, it was tender and warm from the ambient heat, almost sweaty, and all the sweeter for it. As to the prawns there was something about the oil being so hot that it was still boiling, which added a fragrant kick to the dish.
Then again, you see, I may just be dealing with the memories of context rather than food. It's hard to tell. Other dishes at Rebato's were great. Grilled pieces of chorizo were succulent and salty. Patatas bravas - potatoes in a chilli and tomato sauce - worked as good ballast. Very thin slices of raw marinated salmon, one of the night's specials, were light and refreshing. The only unimpressive dish was the calamari, which could have been crisper and softer. We drank a bottle of reasonably priced Rioja from a short wine list and, although we could never pretend we were anywhere else but on south London's mean streets, we were at least a little transported. If not all the way to Seville then perhaps to somewhere a touch more exotic than Vauxhall.
Finally, entries are already coming in from those desperate to win one of six bottles of Glenfiddich whisky on offer in our competition, but we still want more. Just a reminder: we want you to write 250 words on your worst experience in a restaurant. Closing date is this Friday. Mark your entry 'Service Included Competition', and send it to Observer/Life , 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Or you can email me at the address below with the same title in the subject line.
