El Pastor, 6a Stoney Street, London SE1 9AA. Walk-ins only. Meal for two including drinks and service: £40-£75
London’s neighbourhoods stay true to themselves. The City has long been about the raw clink of money and the streets around Brick Lane in the East End have, for centuries, been a first stop for immigrants. The area around London Bridge, meanwhile, has its associations with food. The docks here once supplied the capital with three quarters of its bacon, butter and cheese. It was home to a Branston Pickle factory and up until the 1970s the air smelt hotly of biscuits and jams thanks to factories belonging to Hartley’s and Peek Freens. Bermondsey was the first place to produce Twiglets. It wasn’t called London’s Larder for nothing.
These days Borough Market, on its northwestern edge, smells of chorizo and piquillo peppers, of dry-aged beef burgers ground down from pampered animals that had first names. It smells of freshly fried doughnuts, of oysters on ice and appetite. What was once just the place to pick up ingredients for dinner is now the place to come for dinner itself.
A month ago, of course, this part of London made headlines for all the wrong reasons. But Londoners know the way to confront that kind of crass, shameful outrage: by stubbornly insisting on normality. In Borough’s case that means going there to eat.
Occasionally, the self-appointed custodians of all that is beloved in food have accused the modern Borough Market of forgetting its roots, as if it was some acoustic folk band that put out an ill-advised rock album. They said it had become gentrified, when in truth any kind of bespoke food operation is, by its very nature, an exercise in gentrification.
And yes, Borough Market is shinier and tidier than when it first emerged as a beacon for greedy people in the 1990s. But it’s still a glorious place. If it was in Florence or Barcelona, British food tourists would rave about it, but because it’s in London some of them work hard to sneer. Compared to Barcelona’s Boqueria, cluttered now with tawdry stalls flogging over-priced fruit slushies to tourists, Borough is a bastion of taste and commitment.
And it hasn’t stopped attracting the good stuff. Six months ago, Sam and Eddie Hart, the brothers behind both Quo Vadis and the brilliant Barrafina group of tapas restaurants, helped open a taqueria here called El Pastór. They’re not allowed to say it’s in Borough Market, because it’s on the other side of Stoney Street, but if you lobbed a rare-breed pork chop from under the market’s canopy you could easily get it through the entrance to their renovated railway arch.
It’s a fun space of bare brick and shiny metal and colourful murals; a knowing attempt to bring the street inside. It is a sit-down casual restaurant, which recognises its street-food roots. There are high tables to perch at, a few banquettes for lounging back on and tequilas in worryingly large servings.
The only surprise is how long it’s taken the Harts to do a Mexican restaurant, given their associations with the country. Sam Hart and Crispin Somerville, his business partner here, lived between them for 15 years in Mexico City, running nightclubs. They know this food. The problem is that, until recently, London didn’t. There were doubts about Mexican food being a blunt object. Wasn’t it all mushed avocado and chilli and vinegary notes, wrapped up in flatbreads with ambitions above their station?
Well, yes, there is a bit of that. You do have to watch your ordering at El Pastór, because certain elements repeat, but only in a good way, like the chorus to an anthem by Take That; it’s the challenge of bringing the limited repertoire of street food in off the street. Yes, they really do get through a lot of avocados. But the attention to detail is immense – blue and white corn tortillas, nutty yet soft, are made every day – and the flavours are boisterous. Their guacamole is a wake-up from a shiny brass section: less fatty mush, than a hit of salt and sour and onion crunch underpinned by softer bass notes. For dredging, you can choose between fried tortillas or chicharron, those piggy puffed pork skins. For me this is one of the less difficult decisions; the skins curl into perfect scoops. I’m all about utility, me. Top them with one of half a dozen salsas, including an outrageous condiment of garlic oil with a ballast of smoky toasted chillies.
Glossy squares of tuna, with tension and bite, are dressed with arbol chillies and piled on more avocado. They totter on blue corn tortillas, challenging you to keep the whole damn thing together with one hand. It’s a generous portion for £8, and the stuff of both three napkins and sauce down your forearms.
Tacos come in twos per portion, mostly priced at £6 or £7 a pop. We try the fillets of chargrilled stone bass, the crisp grilled fish piled with sweet caramelised onions, fresh onion, coriander and a brusque salsa. Under that armed assault, the fish still manages to keep its voice. There is pork shoulder, marinated and roasted for 24 hours until it’s so much tangle and thread, with the sweet hit of caramelised pineapple, more guacamole and white onion. Tacos of fried chorizo with soft potato and salsa verde have a little more heft.
A quesadilla convinces me once and for all that a toasted cheese sandwich is still a toasted cheese sandwich, regardless of the exotic language that describes it. I’ll never complain about having to eat one, but I’m also unlikely to write a prose poem in its honour. Curiously one of the most compelling dishes is one of the most humble: their pinto beans in a luscious broth flavoured with cubes of smoked chorizo and pork belly. It is soothing and rich, a soupy dish full of hidden depths that stops the clock.
We finish with their witty take on the Bounty bar, squares of sweetened grated coconut on shortbread, slathered in dark chocolate, and served with sour cream dusted prettily with grated lime zest. It’s there to amuse rather than feed. There’s also a clean tasting chocolate sorbet. We do not drink, but there is that tequila list, lots of cocktails at £8 a pop, and the sense you could mislay an evening here very easily. Alternatively, just wander in for a short graze. After all, it’s what the myriad restaurants of wonderful Borough Market are brilliant for. Do make damn sure to use them.
Jay’s news bites
The first big draw to Borough Market in the 1990s was the chorizo and piquillo pepper roll, knocked out by the hundred every Saturday by Spanish food importers Brindisa. The company has done more than any other to improve Spanish food in Britain; its first restaurant, which opened on the corner of the market in 2004, has continued that work. Come here for impeccable tapas, beautifully hand-cut Spanish hams and a great sherry list (brindisa kitchens.com).
The brilliant Gardener’s Cottage in Edinburgh, which occupies exactly that in one of the city’s parks, is to open a second venture in an old warehouse on Commercial Street in Leith. Quay Commons will offer a bakery, its own charcuterie and a daily changing menu (thegardenerscottage.co).
Chef Frances Atkins, who’s held a Michelin star since 2003, has put her Ramsgill restaurant, the Yorke Arms, up for sale – for around £1.75m. Expect a lot of interest, perhaps from the alumni of Northcote over in Lancashire (yorke-arms.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
