Restaurant review: Hispania, Bank
RESTAURANT
HISPANIA
72-74 Lombard Street, EC3V 9AY
Tel: 0207 621 0338
FOOD Four Stars
VALUE Four Stars
ATMOSPHERE Four Stars
Cost for two with wine: £110
COMBINING the words “Spanish” and “bank” in recent years has been enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth. Yet despite the somewhat portentous association, a group of brave Asturians have taken on a chunk of Lombard Street right next to Bank station and named it Hispania.
I say restaurant, but Hispania is really more of a Spanish emporium, a vast space that includes a bar, a shop-cum-off-licence and an upstairs area that’s used for business events and talks.
Brightly-lit to show off its Spanish tiles and traditional British bank features – our more mature readers may recall when the ground floor was still used by Lloyds – Hispania contrasts starkly with the kind of condensed tapas bars that one typically finds squeezed into narrow crannies throughout the capital.
This came as something of a relief; I generally see tapas bars in London as a cunning way of making you part with £50 in exchange for a few snacks and a bit of wine that’s insufficient to either fill you up or get you tipsy.
For fellow sufferers of this little-Englander paranoia, Hispania offers a solution – main courses. Naturally an establishment such as this is not Wetherspoons-cheap, but it does offer a veal and pork burger for £13. I opted to try the cured ham escalope and chips (£15). It was tender, and stuffed with cheese (manchego, of course). Not bad.
Also available for those suffering from austerity are several rice dishes, including a version blackened with squid ink and including cuttlefish and prawns – yours for just a tenner. The chef was a tad overly-zealous with the salt here, though the seafood was fresh and excellently cooked, boding well for anyone who opts instead for the seafood paella.
Despite my aforementioned prejudices, an hour at Hispania was enough to convince me that visitors may be better off dismissing any economic worries and aiming some fiscal stimulus towards both the excellent meat and cheese plates and the tapas list instead.
The classics – patatas bravas and ham croquettes, for example – do the job nicely, but I’d recommend going for the tuna tartare, which comes with a superb mustard dressing. It’s a winning combination that’s worthy of a place on the menu of any top-end London restaurant.
Another nod towards culinary trendiness arrives with dessert in the form of a deconstructed passion fruit cheesecake. Those of you groaning at the back can put your cynicism on hold for a moment, as this dish, deconstructed or not, is well worth leaving a hole in your stomach for.
Just as Barcelona-supporting Catalans like to see their football team as “more than a club”, Hispania’s garrulous proprietor Javier Fernandez Hidalgo clearly envisages his new venture becoming more than just a restaurant.
He and co-owner Ignacio Lopez Alvarez are keen to stress that their labour of love is becoming a kind of social hub for Spaniards and Hispanophiles in London, hosting conversation classes run by the Instituto Cervantes and even being frequented by several Premier League-based Spanish footballers.
Whether you want a taste of the culture or just a taste of the food, Hispania is the new place to find both.
