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Here is a tale of two Sabors. As you walk in off the street, you’ll first come to a low counter, serving tapas to ever-hopeful walk-ins: that’s The Counter at Sabor. But head upstairs and you’ll find this, a buzzy dining room, rustic with a feminine side. Pale bare bricks, caramel woods, Latin tunes, pretty Sevillian tiles and a wood-fired grill, the ‘asador’.
Up here, the bookable seats aren’t at the open kitchen, but on bar stools up at chest-height communal tables (there’s also a window/wall counter, useful for solo diners or wanting-to-whisper-sweet-nothings type dates). But go in a group. Because the menu focuses less on small plates and more on stuff for sharing. Like an entire wood-roasted fish, or the signature Segovian suckling pig. One pig is £190, ‘just the leg’ a more manageable £38.50. Glazed on the outside, beautifully moist in the middle and served with a thin jus, it’s glorious. But the dish that blew me away was an impossibly perfect Galician tortilla gallega: a back-to-basics variety of barely cooked slivers of potato, soft onion and egg. It looked bouncy yet firm-edged, like something you might lean on for a nap, but one cut and it spilled its guts: eggy liquid gold. Speaking of guts, El Asador is all about pimped-up (though pricy) peasant food, including lots of offal. Get the moreish morcilla (blood sausage) and the frito mallorquin (lamb offal stew, rich and gutsy), but steer well clear of the pigs’ ears (too fatty, far too much aioli). Staff are the same on both floors. That is, an absolute delight.