The Lair

As promised earlier, I’m going to jot down my thoughts on The El Piano, which I visited with a few others on movie day.

Ok, so the basics. It’s a small cosy place that does (and this is important) only vegetarian cuisine. They have eggs (ie: Spanish omlettes), they have cheese (the curried cheese balls in chutney are brilliant), but no meat. Shocked ? I was. I confess, being about as anti-vegetarian as anyone is likely to get, that I approached the visit with a certain degree of trepidation. Happily, I was wrong.

The decor first. The colours inside are vivid (I noticed greens, yellows, oranges, reds) and the roof is festooned with various ornaments and hangings that look like they may well take one’s eye out. As a result, the place actually does look quite cramped and small, which I didn’t like, and probably wouldn’t appreciate had there been a crowd. Fortunately, we walked into an empty restaurant and immediately set about ordering. For anyone from SL, think of a cross between the Gallery Cafe and Barefoot. But serving Mediterranean and Mexican veggie dishes only.

I had heard nice things about the coffee so we (the Don and I) jointly ordered a pot of strong Colombian coffee. The other two, Jeffster and R. split a jug of hot chocolate between them. The coffee was thick, strong and looked much like a watering hole after a herd of elephants had visited. It came complete with a strainer which was essential because there was a lot of coffee grounds and sediment swirling around. Not particularly a coffee connoisseur, but it tasted quite rich and good.

Onto the food. Everything on the menu could be ordered in three sizes. Despite the fancy Spanish names (chica, tapas and racion), it basically means small, medium and large. You buy everything (including tortilla chips, bread or rice) in those portions, mix stuff up and eat. Simple, no?

No meat, remember.. so we had a bit of a tussle figuring out what to order. We (well, the folks who had eaten in there before) went for mushrooms, spicy tofu (which tasted phe-nom-enal), rice, lasagna (which was rather dodgy to me, because I couldn’t wrap my head around a lasagna without meat in it), refried beans, an absolutely wonderful curried cheese ball in mango chutney and umm err.. and a few other things which I can’t recall. Look, we were hungry and it was after 1500, ok ? *looks defensive*. I’ve seen reviews which gush over how large the portions were, but I certainly didn’t experience this myself, we just kept on eating and eating and eating.. and we finished all of it and still felt … not exactly hungry, but peckish. So onto round two, and this was a classic hummus, bread, cottage cheese, tortilla chips and a shallot, mini gherkin, olives in olive oil dealie. And then, finally … we had had enough. Well, almost. We wanted to do ice creams, but the place near the Minster was closed. Bah.

But the point of that description was to say that if it’s a veggie meal that you’re after, then this is a great place. I’ve only seen Indian places (and even then, very few of those) pull off the all-vegetarian menu successfully. Up till that visit, I had no idea that Spanish/Mexican/Mediterranean cuisine could actually taste edible without the near mandatory clumps of fried, roasted or otherwise charred meat portions. What a pleasant way to have my eyes opened. Of course, having said that, it wasn’t an entirely cheap exercise, with the cost of our little jaunt costing .. say the average of 2-3 decent (and by decent I mean HUGE) pub meals. But it was still under £20 a head easily. There is hope for the human race if we all have to stop eating meat tomorrow. Having said that, I give this the same rating I give all other vegetarian restaurants. I’ll eat at them, I’ll like their food. But it would take a strong reason (ie: if one or more of the crowd I’m with are vegetarian themselves) to visit there regularly.

Because if $deity hadn’t intended us to eat animals, why did he make them so tasty ?