Grace Dent reviews Tuyo: Everything arrived with an extra oomph

Ambience 3/5

Food 4/5

Broadway Market has weathered a soft, yet steady, backlash for some time. Not that, as a thoroughfare, it isn’t vibrant and aesthetically cute, or that many of its locals are not splendid. Broadway Market on a quiet Tuesday evening is one of London’s loveliest places to loiter.

Still, at peak times, it is also a magnet for many roaring bellends. You cannot blame this on the thoroughfare itself. It did not ask to be cluttered with affected, scrunch-faced gluten-phobic girls called Araminta every five metres clutching Butchies burgers, harvesting basic-bitch Instagram content. Broadway Market does not hope many further groups of mixed-variety wazzocks will attend again this Saturday, en route to litter London Fields with mini barbecues. When Sartre said ‘Hell is other people’, he had clearly spent more than nine minutes on Saturday at 2pm in The Cat and Mutton.

But if you have visitors in town who absolutely insist on meeting there, I’ve found you somewhere great to hide with a glass of Delicant Côtes de Thau while they mooch about peering at doughnuts and salt-beef sandwiches. Tuyo is a new, gorgeous, neighbourhood-style sort of tapas bar. It is open all day. It takes reservations. It is reasonably priced. These are all notions that bring tremendous cheer to people not in the hospitality industry who simply want somewhere to go. I say it’s sort of tapas as Tuyo is a glorious European, Middle Eastern mishmash of small plates and pinchos, charcuterie and larger offerings such as sea bream with puy lentils.

​Tuyo actually calls itself a ‘contemporary Mediterranean kitchen’. Semantics be damned, I know I can’t get enough in 2017 of this Brexit-boshing style of cooking, which splices Spanish flavours with Greek mannerisms, Levantine loveliness and subtle Scandic hints. Expect small, utterly desirable sweet and salty croquetas made of northern Spanish Picos blue cheese with dates, but also, on the same list, a pretty dish of dill- and lime-cured salmon with beetroot served with raspberries, blackberries and yoghurt. Yes, fish with fruit. The chicken thighs come with honey-poached apricots. Stick that up your bodywarmer, Aunty Sheila from out of town, who doesn’t hold with this foreign food. This is London: we like our menus to be unashamedly, deliciously mongrel.

My abiding memory of Tuyo is that everything arrived with an extra oomph. An oily seductive puddle. A blob of something curiously sweet and sour. Those croquetas, of which I could consume a dozen, appeared with cumin aioli and roasted walnuts. A humble sounding plate of falafel arrived in a gooey mess of black olive and piquillo tapenade. I didn’t expect to love Tuyo, or really to want to review it, but it sneaked into my heart because London is full of chefs who cook with no heart, making an opera of their meagre talents. But then there are people like chef Ricardo Pimental — ex Salt Yard — doing genuinely wonderful tapas-type things at about £8 a plate.

We arrived at 12.30pm on a Sunday, myself and my long enduring friend Tom, planning to have an abstemious glass of something, maybe some olives, perhaps a teensy bowl of prawn and Padrón peppers. In fairness, everyone else in Tuyo was still drinking coffee and on the breakfast menu of shakshouka, huevos turcos and the Tuyo breakfast, which features lamb merguez, duck egg and tahini. But I declared lunchtime officially open. We ordered tiny Bellota burgers; sliders dripping with agri-dolce onion and manchego. The salt cod was rather lovely, too, arriving with a garlic potato puree and festooned in coconut.

I left Tuyo quite tipsy and headed to Columbia Road to buy flowers. I rail against the Broadway Market stereotypes but you must know that Grace & Flavour is absolutely one of those tossers, too.​

Tuyo

2 Glasses of Côtes de Thau £12

1 Olives £3

1 Picos blue and date croquetas £6

1 Salt cod £9

1 Chicken thigh £7.50

1 Prawn and Padrón pepper £6

1 Bellota burger £6

1 Salmon £8.50

1 Falafel £7

1 Bread basket £4.50

Total £69.50

129A Pritchard’s Road, Hackney, E2 (020 7739 2540; tuyo.london)