Top tapas redolent of sunnier climes
IT’S December and the weather forecasts are daily updates of misery and pain, full of threatening-sounding ghouls like Arctic blasts and polar vortices.
Plus, it’s Christmas soon so you can’t afford to go on holiday because you’re saving for new clothes for your work’s party (which you won’t fit into the other side of New Year’s Eve) and 13 Lynx box sets to distribute among the less cherished members of your extended family.
And on top of that, you’re just not ‘Christmassy’ yet.
You keep thinking you might be – a Greggs mince pie here, a sideways glance at the Fenwick window there – but it isn’t really happening yet.
The whole thing’s just a little on the bleak side right now, isn’t it?
You need a little break away, a sojourn in the sun – and I know just the place.
THE RESTAURANT
Kaltur opened a few months back on Newcastle’s increasingly lively High Bridge.
A tiny, stylish-looking place with bottles of wine and jars of deliciouslooking morsels in the windows to entice you, Kaltur is the type of place you want to dive into out of the cold even before you’re entirely sure what it is.
It doesn’t have the most romantic backstory: its great grandparents might be Iberian but its immediate parentage can be traced back to a Spanish food wholesale business based in Benton.
The restaurant itself is intimate and a little bit ramshackle – but isn’t that exactly what you want from a tapas place?
Close your eyes, listen to the Spanish lilt of the waiting staff over the chatter around you, feel the warmth, smell the food in the air. You’re on holiday.
THE FOOD
As is right and proper with tapas, each dish comes as and when it is ready to be served so we’ll review the stars of the show in order of appearance.
First up, partridge pate and sobrasada served with crispbreads.
The little dollop of pate is heavy and intensely rich, thicker and more savoury than Brussels pate, and it’s delightful.
If you haven’t tried it before, sobrasada is a raw, cured sausage meat which has its origins in the cheery tradition of matanza – or, as we might call it, ritualistic winter pig slaughter.
The black Iberian swine chomp their way through autumn on acorns before meeting their maker and being bled out on a table, their meat used to produce the nutty, smoky delicacy.
As you’ve probably guessed by this stage, it’s not for everyone but, remember, you’re on holiday, so live a little.
Next, Mojama tuna loin: finely cut slices of cured tuna meat, dowsed in
olive oil, so thin it almost dissolves on the tongue and as salty as the sea it was plucked from.
Not for the faint-hearted and your mouth will feel about as dehydrated as the tuna itself afterwards, but it’s well worth trying.
That’s swiftly followed by a more familiar pleasure: delicious chunks of fried potatoes coated in spicy brava sauce and alioli.
Admit it, this is what you came for. Remember winter? Being skint? Christmas? Thought not.
Enter the tempura aubergine, coated in cane honey, which, with its Asian flavour, sits rather oddly with the rest of the meal (which isn’t remotely a problem because its excellent).
The star of the show: boquerones – Mediterranean white anchovies, lightly battered and served with a wedge of lime.
It’s a terrible cliché to say food can transport you – but this does.
You’re on the beach. The waves are lapping lazily on the golden sand and your flight home is a lifetime away.
Finally, king prawns fried “à la Andaluza”. They couldn’t be simpler: little if any seasoning or garnish, just fresh, plump prawns that do all the hard work themselves.
I’m so hypnotised by this stage that the waiter needs to restrain me from laying a beach towel on the table and taking a siesta.
DESSERTS AND PLONK
We topped that off with crema Catalana “froth” – an innovation on a classic that was neither particularly necessary or particularly worth it – and a heavy, unsweetened slice of chocolate cake in a sweet, cool berry juice.
They’re fine but could easily be jettisoned to make way for another dish in the mains round.
We saw that it slipped and slid southward easily with a bottle of some rioja or other (the name of which I failed to take note of but I can confirm it went down with ease).
And if you’re the type who’s offended by that casual attitude to vino, you’ll love the drinks menu, which is as long and varied as you could wish.
The damage? That all came to a little over £60.
VERDICT
There’s a preponderance of perfectly serviceable but unremarkable tapas restaurants around these days. Kaltur is something a little different.
Testing flavours, traditional delicacies, tiny portions of something which has been embalmed in salt and hung out in the sun for weeks: this is the tapas your mother warned you about.
Kaltur’s hand in the import businesses shows - the ingredients need to do the talking in dishes like these and the produce on offer here could talk for days.
The food is untampered with, left out to be judged for what it is.
It doesn’t make for the world’s most accessible meal (as my friend put it at one point, “it could do with a little pot of mayo or something”) but you leave feeling you’ve spent a worthwhile evening exploring something new.
And, as the cold creeps in and your soul yearns to head south with the birds, that’s precisely what you need.