Rambla

RAMBLA will be Victor Garvey’s third restaurant, scheduled to open in late September 2017. Specialising in the Catalan food of Garvey’s childhood in Barcelona and named after the city’s most famous boulevard, Rambla will be significantly larger than both Encant and Sibarita.

RAMBLA - Catalan Cuisine

RAMBLA will be Victor Garvey’s third restaurant, scheduled to open in late September 2017.

Specialising in the Catalan food of Garvey’s childhood in Barcelona and named after the city’s most famous boulevard, Rambla will be significantly larger than both Encant and Sibarita.

http://ramblalondon.com

review of London Spanish tapas restaurant Rambla by Andy Hayler

The menu offered a selection of tapas dishes at moderate prices, with everything on the menu except the Iberico Bellotta ham being below £10.

Sample labels included El Tesoro Vedejo Castilla Leon at £19 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for £7, Mas Macia Supreme Blanc at £32 compared to its retail price of £8, and ArdilesMerum Prioarati Priorat at £46 for a wine that will set you back £18 in a shop.

Sea bass (£7) was the dish of the meal, the fish from a large 6kg specimen which had excellent flavour, served on a bed of port-braised salsify and Jerusalem artichoke soubise (onion sauce).

The bill with lots of wine came to £67 a head but if you ordered three tapas dishes plus dessert and shared a modest bottle of wine then a typical all-in price per head might here be around £38.

I could not resist repeating the sea bass (now £9 and still a bargain) cooked a la plancha with Jerusalem artichoke soubise, which is a creamy onion sauce made by pureeing the vegetables with béchamel, and salsify poached in port.

Rambla, Soho, London: consistently, the best food I've eaten in years

Fay Maschler reviews Rambla: A five-star homage to Catalonia ...

Writing about this new Catalan restaurant in Soho, I am not claiming independence.

An alumnus of some high-octane Spanish kitchens — with the American part of his own heritage worked out in Las Vegas restaurants linked to French starred chefs — Garvey oscillates with ambition.

To put it another way, Victor and I have become friends — and to review friends, if not exactly an unknown situation in the restaurant business, is ticklish.

Recognition gets us a corner table by the plate glass frontage — scrupulousness is the watchword here — where the footfall of Dean Street seems almost in your lap, enlivening but maybe not such a great sensation in a place called Rambla.

Steering my chums away from items ordered on the first visit, I deny them jamon de bellota gran riserva (first rate) with pan con tomate and esqueixada de bacallà, a salad of tomatoes, red peppers and black olives incorporating sashimi-grade raw cod and skinny sourdough croutons.

Rambla, London W1, restaurant review: 'the best Catalan faux-tapas ...

The ability to delay gratification is allegedly one of the things that separates adults from children – that and Snapchat.

In the very early Seventies, however, there was no Snapchat, just veeeeery long journeys in the back of the Volv, accompanied by Noel Streatfeild’s entire oeuvre.

Rambla, London W1: 'Italy stand down: Catalonia wins at cannelloni ...

Wine, says our charmingly apologetic waiter, is more their thing: thankfully, this doesn’t translate to a long list of obscure and vowel-less varieties, but an uncluttered sheet of A4 with a few cavas and sherries and a handful of Spanish whites and reds, many available by the glass.

festooned with strips of serrano ham and sitting in a white wine and spider crab butter sauce so delicious that, after a small difference of opinion concerning the acceptability of drinking from serving bowls in public, we end up using the empty shells as spoons to scoop up the remainder.

Indeed, it’s hard to believe the same kitchen could turn out a dish as exquisitely delicate as the cod sashimi with sweet red pepper, tomatoes and black olives that arrives at the same time: pretty as a picture, but infinitely nicer to eat, this is definitely a polite knife, fork and tweezer for the microherbs job.

The only slightly duff notes are pan con tomate, usually a good test of a kitchen’s mettle, which features fridge-cold and woolly fruit (serves me right for ordering it in November), and some creamy, nutmeg-spiked spinach croquetas that, though pleasant enough, taste underpowered in this company.

The sole dessert (they’d run out of torrija, though our waiter spends some time lovingly describing it anyway, so I can at least tell you it sounds good) is a bullseye, too: a warm, oozy apricot and almond pudding with some louchely liquid frozen yoghurt that pairs brilliantly with figgy Pedro Ximinez, the only sweet wine on offer.

Rambla | Restaurants in Soho, London

Opening a tapas restaurant on the same street as Barrafina is pretty much the food world equivalent of trying to sell crack on a kingpin dealer’s corner.

It’s dangerously ballsy, but Rambla clearly has big cojones: it’s moved in, whacked on a fun Eurotrash playlist and started dishing out croquetas like there’s no tomorrow.

A dish of tender octopus had a warm charcoal depth, while spinach croquetas were both wonderfully golden on the outside and creamy within.

A shame, as Rambla’s tapas is certainly the cheapest on Dean Street, and its chutzpah and colour is endearing.

Go, but just for the croquetas, octopus and booze.