Tapajax

Tapajax recently opened in the old Ben’s Canteen premises on St. John’s hill in Battersea. As a fan of tapas, I’d been eager to eat there since I first spotted it whilst stuck in one of the eternal traffic jams that plague the Clapham Junction area.

It takes about 6-8 minutes to walk to Tapajax from the railway station, though it seems longer if caught in the rain as me and my lunching companion were. It was a Friday in the period after curfew, but before Boris’s tiers (of a clown as we’ve christened them in our house) and we needed cheering up.

As I damply walked in, I looked to see what the differences were between the new and the old occupiers. Being honest, the interior didn’t feel particularly Spanish, though again being honest I’ve actually no idea what that would look like…Sangria pitchers everywhere, castanets hanging from the walls next to posters depicting the exploits of famous toreadors? Or would that just be a bunch of cliches?

It was plainly painted, with an emphasis on red and white with a mixture of regular and raised tables. We were lucky, we got a raised table near the bar and so could sit beside the bar for the first time in a long time.

The menu is spilt into 3 sections, light tapas (starters,) and meat and fish. There are about 8 items in each and then a shorter dessert section. The menu is short enough that the wine list can fit on the opposite side of the page. This is a nice mix of Spanish, Italian and strangely American wine, all retailing in the £25-£45 range apart from the more expensive fizz.

It being a Friday, and me having done a solid day’s work all morning (typing and phone calls,) we felt justified in starting with some padron peppers and ham croquettes. We’d each had a beer to start whilst perusing the menu, but in order to ensure we didn’t die of thirst we’d also ordered a bottle of the house pinot grigio (£23.50) and had been pleasantly surprised by all of it. The peppers were salted just right, the croquettes cheesy and ham-my and melt in the mouth.

The next round consisted of the garlic prawns and chorizo. The prawns were fresh and flavourful, whilst not being overpowered by the garlic. The chorizo and the sauce were pungent, salty with a hint of umami that made you want to keep going back for more.

And we did, back to the menu and now went for the pork cheeks, the Argentine steak and a second bottle of pinot grigio…well there was a hint of saltiness about the proceedings. Both were mini triumphs with fireworks of taste exploding on the tongue and zinging like rockets around the mouth. The steak was small, but mighty with the flavour of well-aged cut.

Our stomachs were by this time starting to bloat somewhat, but no we weren’t finished, there were still items on the menu we hadn’t tried. So next we returned to our happy place with a nostalgic plate of ham croquettes, to remind us of the good times 45 minutes beforehand, but with an order of the Iberian pork with mushrooms, parsley and garlic to alert us to the good times yet to be.

Now replete and with me eyeing the inverted wine bottle through its spout to catch any recalcitrant drops, the management piled on the joy with a couple of complementary limoncellos. The bill when it came was about £125, but that was with us going quite frankly a bit mad. You didn’t need all the food and booze we’d had, you can have a jolly nice time for about half what we paid.

Anyway, we had gone mad…and that had a lot to do with the excellent of both the troughing and the sluicing. Having made it out of Tapajax, we managed to get about a third of the way down the road to the Round house, Wandsworth common northside. Don’t worry we were home well before curfew though in my case not properly ambulatory till the following Sunday. C’est la vie dans la curfew.

Till the next time fellow inmates, Rob