Today I was invited along to Bar Pepito, London’s only sherry bar and styled after one of the small one-room bars that you’ll find down alleyways in towns and cities all over Spain. I was there to join in as new staff from its bigger sister, the Camino Cruz del Rey restaurant across the square in Kings Cross’s Regent Quarter were taught about the range of cavas, wines and sherries that they will be serving to customers at their new restaurant in West Ferry that opens very soon, aptly titled Camino Puerto del Canario.
Richard Bigg, Camino’s passionate owner and lover of all things Spanish, along with the British representative of Gonzalez Byass, the large Spanish winery, or ‘bodega’, which makes most of the products that Richard sells, took us on a virtual guided tour around Spain for an hour or two. We sampled the sparling wines made in the Champagne method (‘cava‘), sherries (‘jerez’ – the English word sherry is a corruption of the old Moorish word for the fortified wines made in the triangle formed by the towns of Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlucar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa Maria in the Andalusian region of Spain) and white wines that you’ll find on their wine list. Its quite common in Spain to spend an entire evening drinking sherry with friends – that’s acknowledged in Richard’s menu by the fact that the sherries that they serve are listed first. At Bar Pepito it’s served ice cold in generous helpings and bears no resemblance to the half-empty bottle that you used to find at the back of your grandma’s sideboard! Clearly sherry has found its niche because Timeout Magazine lists this intimate little place in its top ten London wine bars.
From the small helpings that we tried out (and we sampled every single wine on the menu during the session!) I thought that the Anna De Codorniu Brut Rosada cava was the best. A rose sparkling wine made from pinot noir and chardonnay, it had that lovely smokey aroma and creamy taste that I really like. Cava has a bit of a bad reputation in the UK but I think that’s probably because we’re used to drinking the £5 bottles that are mass-produced and shoved on the shelves of every supermarket. Richard sells this for just over £23 a bottle and it shows – its as sturdy as any champagne.
I’ve not been a great fan of sherry in the past but then I suppose I haven’t really given it a chance – now was the perfect opportunity, but unfortunately my expensive tastes came into play here. Although the most modestly priced sherry that’s served at Pepito is only just over £12 a bottle (it’s a very acceptable crisp, dry ‘fino’ style sherry from Tio Pepe) my nose led me towards the Oloroso Antique, Fernando de Castilla – a 20 year old wine that’s a less than modest £32 a bottle! It was wonderful though, really rich and complex with an incredibly long smooth nutty finish and a powerful ‘christmas pudding’ aroma about it – I think I could handle paying that much for a really special occasion. Perhaps Christmas would be appropriate… Last on the menu were the eleven white wines that Richard serves, all the way from fresh, zesty new wines to four year old full-bodied and sweet ones. My taste here landed me right in the middle of the pack with a Verdi Albera, Celler Marti Fabra from 2009, and its £19 price tag is very deceptive – I’ve not drunk white wine as good as this since a friend splashed out on an incredibly expensive French bottle at a celebration in Soho many years ago. As the accompanying tasting notes say, ‘it punches well above its weight’. I can’t wait to try it again!
As you can imagine if all we’d done all afternoon was drink wine we’d have been insensible in about half an hour, so I should just mention that tapas from the restaurant across the square arrived throughout the session. In addition to the usual fare that you might expect – olives, squid, chorizo and the like, we also tried one or two really stand-out dishes. There was a really rich black rice dish (‘arroz negro‘, coloured with squid ink and flavoured with heaps of butter) and a very fine Manchego cheese to sample – I remember the central market in Valencia absolutely reeking of this cheese, which is very similar to parmesan with its nutty flavour and powerful aftertaste. I won’t go on any further except to say that this afternoon’s experience may have weaned me off Spanish chain restaurants such as La Tasca for good. While they serve acceptable food, the passion here for all things Spanish at Camino and Bar Pepito simply blows them out of the water when it comes to an authentic dining experience. There’s a fantastic attention to detail in the decor of the restaurant too – all around the edge of the bar ‘camino’ is spelled out in an ancient cuneform script and it’s lined with cork in tribute to the wine makers. As this is an old piano varnisher’s yard the centre piece of the restaurant is also notable – a glassed-over dome matching the hole in the roof where pianos would be lowered in and out of the building. Of course the most important thing about a place like this is the staff – most of them are Spanish including, crucially, their head chef who comes from the Basque region. Things don’t just revolve around dinner either – you can come here for a coffee and pastry for breakfast or nip in for lunch, and try your hand at table football or curl up with your laptop and some lovely food and take advantage of the free wifi.
I hope I’ve excited you about this place because it really is a remarkable example of Kings Cross’s continuing regeneration (we won’t dwell on Kings Cross station’s ugly 1970s frontage or that terrible derelict triangle of shops to one side though – hopefully they’ll get round to fixing those eyesores soon!). Camino and Bar Pepito even have a cute website, made out to look like a sketchpad which you can delve into here, and of course you’ll also find them on Facebook. Go and have a meal there – I give you my cast-iron promise that you will not regret it. I’m going to go back as soon as I possibly can…
About The Londoneer
I must admit I rather like a wee drop of sherry. A few years back I discovered a very traditional little non tourist bar in Barcelona, which had about 12 huge barrels of different sherries. Needless to say in the aid of research we sampled each one, and they were all good. And best of all they were only about 2 quid a glass, along with free tapas. In London such an evening would have cost a small fortune.
Spain is lovely – I've been to Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Bilbao. I had a wonderful experience eating tapas in a small restaurant in the shadow of Seville Cathedral one summer evening, with trees heavy with oranges swaying outside – magical!