REVIEW: Camino, Blue Fin Building, Canvey Street, Bankside

Sadly this isn’t a glass of Champagne pictured above, but it’s just as good – a chilled glass of refreshing Cava. It’s been a good while since I had a glass and even longer since I visited a Spanish restaurant in London. When I first started out on the dining scene Spanish food seemed to be the trend, with its full on flavours and dreamy Iberico hams. Now its taken a slight back-burner because cuisines wise you can get just about everything in London from all four corners of the world. My recent Spanish experience led me to the newest branch of Camino Bankside – the groups sixth addition to its portfolio. Compared to the rest of the groups restaurants/bars this new Camino seems a little less relaxed and more of a drinking den, aimed at City workers.

Inside Camino Bankside the decor is sterile, cold and with tiny seats at one end of the restaurant, along with tall breakfast bar seating. To put it bluntly there is absolutely no chance you’ll get cozy here so bring a cushion or expect to leave with a numb bottom. The outside seating is certainly an attraction in the summer months, but during the winter I don’t see any attraction. We took a seat outside in the summer warmth and ordered a couple of empanadillas stuffed with spinach and goats cheese. Puffed to perfection and well seasoned – they were lovely. Pan con tomate is rarely offensive and here they did a good job of putting together one of my most satisfying affairs – that and the perfectly grilled and salted piemento de padron. Thankfully we didn’t come across a spicy one.

A bottle of cold white wine went down very nicely with our meal, or perhaps too nicely considering it only lasted three or four courses in. So with a few dry glasses, we topped them up with a half bottle of fino sherry from Bodegas Lustau – arguably they make some of the best sherry in the world (they’ve even trademarked the accolade!) and after my recent visit to their bodega in Jerez I can confirm it’s all true. We paired the tipple with morcilla de burgos – which is pan-fried black pudding (similar to the British kind) with spicy alegria peppers. This was probably the best dish we ate here and that sausage had a lovely light texture and flavour. Mahon cheese from Menorca and chilli jam isn’t usually the pairing with a dry fino, but I think sherry goes with just about anything and the rich nutty tones only complimented this otherwise quite simple cheese.

A full plate of Jamon Teruel and Jamon Iberico turned out to be a nice enough dish, although I’d have liked the meat to have been a little more of the melt-in-the-mouth kind. Pan roasted octopus tentacle with purple potatoes, paprika and olive oil, really did look the part when it arrived. Juicy, fragrant and nice enough, but – it was only just that, nice. I’m not sure what it was exactly that didn’t do it for us but I think everything simply tasted far more ordinary than we’d hoped. Still it did the job of putting us into a near food coma.

Dessert (of which I somehow lost the photo) was an almond tart with clotted cream. First time round it arrived with an intense salty tang (of which we complained) but a second slice arrived much fresher and not an ounce of salt. I’ve no idea what happened but perhaps it was cut with a knife covered in salt?! who knows. The new version was a nice enough dessert, but nothing to write home about. Camino was a nice dinner and had all the classics you could only hope for – but it was simple. Depending what you order the meal can fall short of ordinary. With maybe more precision on the cooking and a complete overhaul of the décor then I could learn to love this place but right now its a little like a lot of other Spanish restaurants in London – great as a local but not worth a long travel.

6/10