Mystery bar!

In anoth­er of this shame­less­ly uno­rig­i­nal series, I’ve just been stuff­ing my abdomen with seri­ous­ly good snack­ing and some tasty cock­tails at this brazen­ly Europhile lit­tle place.

The wine list is designed to tempt you out of your vinous rut, since while each sec­tion is “inspired” by a style or vari­etal, it branch­es out from there into less obvi­ous wines. For instance, the “Ries­ling” sec­tion also lists Grün­er Velt­lin­er and that unusu­al Moscatel/Gewürtztraminer con­coc­tion known as Viña Esmer­al­da. The cock­tail list is exten­sive and inven­tive, includ­ing such delights as the “Span­ish Inqui­si­tion”: rasp­ber­ry, cin­na­mon, amaro and Amon­til­la­do (I nev­er expect­ed that).

But it’s the food that real­ly stands out. You can have a full meal, but the con­cept is real­ly a sort of pan-Mediter­ranean tapas, with mor­eish and occa­sion­al­ly Moor­ish morsels that include sko­rdalia with Cata­lan “chasti­ty bread”, truf­fled Jerusalem arti­chokes, pis­ta­chio cous­cous and Ouzo-flamed sagana­ki. Com­bine that with pleas­ant­ly Old World décor, rea­son­able prices and some seri­ous eye-can­dy among the wait­ing staff, and you’ve got a recipe for more than one hap­py barfly.