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Capitan Tortilla |
REVL events app wants to stop people from experiencing FOMO ...
food
REVL According to Brandon Stephens, the founder of the £25.3 million Tortilla restaurant chain, there's an app for everything — except for events.
Enter REVL, the UK's biggest events discovery app which disclosed £2.4 million in Seed funding earlier this year.
REVL Signing up on the app — using email or a social media login — allows users to select their interests, and add their favourite pubs, musicians, art galleries, and comedians to "playlists."
He added that while working with partners is a great way to spread the word about REVL, the platform is also a way for partners such as the UK film board or the National Gallery to promote their events instead of through their own marketing efforts.
Building the 'ultimate events app' Stephens declined to share the number of users the app has so far, but said: "We're ahead of our competition."
El Pastor: Home
El Pastor is a Mexican Taqueria serving tacos with tortillas made from scratch in house every day, along with fresh salsas, Mexican beers, mezcal and more.
Tortilleria El Pastor is a tortilla factory and eat-in taco bar, which also sells fresh tortillas, chillies, tomatillos and everything you need to make Mexican food at home.
From Sam and James Hart and Crispin Somerville, the Pastors were inspired by Sam and Crispin’s time living in Mexico running cult nightclub, El Colmillo, a commitment to use the best Mexican heritage corn and ingredients available, and to always have a bit of a party.
Breddos, London EC1: 'It isn't Mexican or Tex-Mex food. It's a chaotic ...
ambience food menu
Now, I swoon at a cacophony of tastes as much as the next palate on a journey to jaded, but Gill’s words resonate as I take possession of a series of Breddos’ signature tacos.
The duo behind Breddos, Nud Dudhia and Chris Whitney, were food-obsessed friends who jacked in their jobs to start selling beef shortrib tacos from a shack at east London’s Netil Market.
Their new restaurant is a cutie: lightboxes, hand-painted wall menus, booths; during an early-days visit, it’s populated by a swearathon of industry insiders, chefs dick-swinging so noisily that it puts me off my frilly fried egg taco with macadamia nut mole, hoja santa (a lightly anise-scented Mexican leaf) and homemade queso fresco.
They’re the perfect vehicle for the dazzling toppings, each core ingredient (pig’s head cochinita pibil, say; or crisp-fried masa chicken; or a loose pile of their own fragrant chorizo verde; or smoky roast sweet potato) with a backing choir of electrifying salsas and seasonings: honey and pasilla chile glaze, habanera sauce, shrimp chiltomate, x’ni pek, pea mole.
Menus change frequently: you might find crunchy nut sweetbread tacos, or the shortribs could come with masa onion rings and pickled jalapeño instead of lemon onions.
Arbequina, Oxford: 'It sees me ordering a second bottle at lunch ...
food staff drinks
Anyway, to Oxford, where I’ve long since given up trying to get a table at wildly oversubscribed Oli’s Thai, prompted by news that its owner Rufus Thurston has teamed up with Ben Whyles of former east Oxford stalwart Door 74, and opened a tapas joint, Arbequina.
This little restaurant, like its Thai sibling, takes the odd cliche and, through excellent provenance (bottles of fine, fruity olive oil on every table; arbequina olives, of course), smart buying (some of the spices come from as far away as the excellent Maroc Deli a few doors down) and a clued-up kitchen, delivers the kind of lunchtime pleasure that sees you (OK, me) ordering a second bottle, hunkering down on a stool and signing up for the chocolate salami.
Simple dishes done with a flourish are the order of the day, many of them vegetarian-friendly: butternut squash roasted until squishy and toffee-edged, with coriander, tahini and truly fine chickpeas – yes, folks, there are good and bad chickpeas, and these are so tender and creamy, they’re possibly the sought-after Navarrico.
Meat eaters can rejoice in a luxurious hunk of pork belly, crackling-crisp on top, the meat collapsing under the fork, and sparky with mojo verde, the Canarian green sauce, ringing with garlic, cumin and coriander.
– and that beetroot borani, an exquisite, Iranian-influenced cross between a dip and a salad is, amazingly, even better than the original: the earthy root laced with garlic, sherry vinegar, yoghurt and dill, scattered with walnuts and feta, and topped with finely diced yellow beetroot almost pickled in muscat wine.