It's Varsity match day - in April, a major change in tradition. None of the usual gang can make it, so B says she'll come with me - another break in tradition. This means that the normal all-day breakfast at the Wetherspoon's before the game won't hack it, so I research some other options.
I was looking for tapas, but the only one I could find was Indian "tapas" at Tsaretta Spice at the far end of chi-chi Church Street. When we arrive at 1pm, we are the only ones in there - later two other tables arrive. I had expected them to busy on a match day, so was pleasantly surprised to be offered the choice of tables, including ones for four.
We order a French Viognier at £26 and settle down to choose the dishes. There is a wide selection, tapas and mains. So in the end we settled on just having the chef's meat tapas tasting platter, with a few extra additions - scallops, pappadums, dhal makhani and garlic naan.
The pappadums come first - smaller, curly ones - with three dips, which are all interesting and quite spicy. Could happily just munch on those all day. The platter is four dishes - grilled tiger prawns, tilapia fish fingers, fried chicken pieces and lamb meatballs in a particularly spicy and gooey tomato sauce. The scallops are small queen scallops, but served nicely in a shell with garlic lemon and shallots. The dhal is good and thick and creamy, and the naan visibly and nasally very strong on the garlic.
All very good and served in a good friendly style. It's a modern style place with big windows and it seemed that there would be tables outside in the summer. Modern inoffensive music at low volume. There's just a 10% service charge, so with a second bottle of wine it comes to £115. Not cheap but worth it. If you were local, then this would be a regular haunt I imagine.
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