Granada: Day 2

After quite some debate Sister and I managed to figure out most of the places that we had visited the previous evening. And, as a result of us being Golden, track down her hat, the loss of which had threatened to spoil the whole of her year.

Headwear restored we were off to the Alhambra. If only we'd had some opium this'd be proper Kubla Khan stuff, as it was it was merely mesmerising and sublime.

The closest bar to the Alhambra furnished with a fine breakfast at about 2pm (closest excluding the ones inside where I had enjoyed a couple of pre-breakfast stiffeners). Potato fried with egg, vegetables and Jamon, was as hearty and unpretentious as it sounds. Bang on.

Back into town and a little beer at Damas Queros allows to properly investigate the various sizes of beer recepticles on offer. In Granada a 'Cana' seemed to weigh in below half a pint, which can mean it's gone before any tapas arrives. Here we discover the more manly 'Tubo'- perfect at around 300ml. We also have mushrooms al alijo with bread. A small portion must have made a sizeable dent in an entire clove, but Sister and I are never knowingly out-garlicked and hence loved this one.

From there to one of the most ultra-trad bars in town: 'Los Diamantes.' Tiny, with almost no seating space and three-deep at the bar at any given time. Seemed to specialize in deep-fried stuff, both dishes we had could have done with some sauce.

Also on c. Navas we found Puerta del Carmen bar and two Equipo Navazos sherries by the glass; La Bota de Fino #18 and La Bota de Palo Cortado #21. They were like good sherry on steroids: with greater intensity, complexity, precision and delineation of flavours. Jamon carved at the bar was all that was needed with them.

On to c. Elvira, universally recommended as the place to go for El Tapeo. Unfortunately in the time between this advice being formed and our arrival most seemed to have become hairdressers.

Weird, but no matter because at the end we managed to find Al Sur de Granada a deli, shop and wine bar that I had been recommended and had every intention of going to right up to the point on the flight over when I forgot its name and address.

It must have 30 or so natural wines by the glass, including the entire Barranco Oscuro range. Highlights were Tres Uves, and a Chardonnay called 'Cardonnohay'. We returned to Al Sur a number of times throughout the three days to work through their list and soon came to realise that the wine really was the star attraction: each tapa was vertically identical and amounted to no more than a small bruschetta with cheese, blood sausage and some veg.

Maybe a good thing 'though- otherwise I may never have left.

Tapa of the Day: Champinones al Alijo

Granada: Day 1

My little Sister (motto: 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Shiny Things.') recently decided to emigrate to a made up country*. Which, needless to say, has caused considerable anxiety amongst her friends and family.

Said country also happens to be Arabic, which, needless to say, has caused her considerable anxiety, especially in regards to her normal wine and pork based diet. Which meant the destination for the obligatory going-away-blowout holiday needed to be thought out carefully.

For about 20 seconds.

Granada. A city famous for its tradition of a free tapa with every drink and in a region that worships pigs like deities and rates them like S&P. We decided not to pay for food the entire trip to allow us to fully master the art of El Tapeo...

Day one was a Sunday, a day of rest and stodgy Paella. But later on we managed to find the superlative El Deseo, which furnished us with Barranco Oscuro wines by the glass, and something Godly (I know not what) which involved tomatoes, aubergine, olive oil and goat's cheese alchemically combined to make a tapa of monumental excellence.

They also had a good chicken, chickpea and veg salad, and some cracking aged manchego, hollowed from its wheel at the bar, sprinkled with sticky-sweet Jerez vinegar. Served with a mad, bad and spiky glass of Blancas Nobles it was nutty, salty, sweet, sour, simple and delicious.

From there we moved to the Granadian equivalent of a rough pub to watch Granada triumph away to Athletic Bilbao. Here we endured a dubious sandwich, spread thinly with tuna and tomato paste, as well as some potatoes covered in a shiny red sauce; shinier and saucier than ketchup, but not fooling anyone with its presumed aspirations to Brava.

A day marked by extremes of quality but ultimately marred by the fact that Sister later insisted on drinking half her own bodyweight in Mojitos and losing her hat.

Tapa of the Day: Aubergine and Tomato mush.

* Fujairah

Noella Morantin Mon Cher Gamay '10

"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Someone once said. Tennyson, if the old memoria serves correctly.

I came close to the latter with Noella Morantin's 'Mon Cher' Gamay. On opening this was a particularly ungenerous expression of the grape, with green and bitter tannins, lean fruit, earth and some black pepper. I almost consigned it to the sink.

But no. Noella has a reputation that must be founded on something apart from her excellent bandana. She's got history, having been in the winemaking game since 2004, and rents vinyards from the well established Clos Roche Blanche.

And most of all- she loves Gamay. My kind of lass.

Day 2 and faith is rewarded- much more expressive; liqorice laces and sweet fruit. The tannin has worked its way into the wine, leaving the structure more acid based. Vibrant, sappy, finishing with a surprising and pleasing caramel note to back the fruit. Red in tooth and claw, but still a touch of dark.

And now the bottle's empty.

Best of all, I think, to have loved without loss, but that apparently isn't an option in life or wine.

The Abbeville Kitchen

47 Abbeville Road, SW5 9QN. £15 pp.


The quality restaurants are closing in. Each new opening seems closer to me, and all I can do is hope the money runs out before heart disease kicks in.

Most recently: The Abbeville Kitchen, the latest project from those behind the Anchor and Hope and The Canton Arms, has placed itslef so close to where I live that walking there doesn't burn off the calories consumed by merely looking at the menu.

I needed some financial advice of a Friday, and seeing that Emily1 has eschewed the traditional job market in favour of getting 'sponsored' by a middle-aged gentleman she seemed the ideal candidate to get along for lunch.

We kick off with with the charcuterie platter. Quite splendid Iberico ham and not too cold, some other italian ham which was less remarkable and lastly that sublime salami studded with fennel seeds and sliced super-thin, which is currently neck-and-neck with sausage rolls as the best way to consume pork yet invented.

After that we head for pidgeon breast, chicory and pickled walnut salad. A seemingly nonchalant throwing together of strong flavours that all pull in the same direction. Really quite good.

Now for the bad. They have only one (ONE!) type of beer- an overpriced Belgian lager, and a friendly but uninspring wine list which is pretty much a carbon copy of the Canton Arms'. On a Friday lunch the restaurant was full, but every single other table was taken by a pair of 30 something year old women sitting opposite each other, which made Emily1 and I, both wearing sunglasses and so hungover we could barely speak, stand out like Buddha in a brothel.

I'm pleased it is where it is, but it's not The Canton. It's not trying to be. It's a pity.

Yvon Metras Moulin-a-Vent '10

c. £23

There's something special about windmills. Their ease and grace, their silence. In parts of Spain they spatter the countryside like shot. Yet they are vital; pumping water and grinding grain, giving life out of nothing, the unmoved mover. The absurdity of Quixote is not that he saw the windmills as giants, it is that he was attacking windmills.

But here in the city we are far away from this calm and serenity, and sometimes other pleasures must be found. Sometimes the only thing for it is to get smashed on expensive wine and go out partying till sunrise with models. So I packed a bottle of Yvon Metras' Moulin-a-Vent and went off to see the Russian's American Sister in Shoreditch.

This is classy juice. It pours a light maroon and hits with a focused and concentrated mushroomy sous bois on the nose. The palate is alive, fine acidity and red fruit, precise slate-y minerality, some structure, unreal length. Reminds overwhelmingly of Grand Cru Burgundy. Seriously sexy stuff.

Gotta love windmills.

Dugois Arbois Savagnin '05 & Chateau Batailley '94

Over the last couple of months I have been wallowing with the eagles at night a fair amount more than is probably good for me. So the rare occurance of making it to bed before 7am on Saturday meant that I was up in time to accompany Sister, through the blazing October sunshine to Borough market in search of pork.

'Nduja is one of the many ingredients available in London at the moment that are as trendy and delicious as they are unpronouncable. It is a raw pork sausage from Cantabria made mostly with head and neck cuts and then laced with shed-loads of hot peperoncino chilli. The porcine equivalent of speedballing.

Some people like to cook with it; frying it up or adding to sauces for pasta or fish. And whilst I'm sure this is great, it's also a bit of a cop-out. It's really just a pimped up Sobressade and hence better eaten on it's own, spread thickly on crusty bread.

It's also fantastically difficult to pair. The rich porkiness that you get from cheap cuts and raw fat shot through with untamed chilli seems specifically designed to obliterate almost any wine you care to mention.

We tried a couple of leftfield juices with supper: Dugois Arbois Savagnin '05 and Chateau Batailley '94.

The Batailley was the better wine: all sour blackberry and sweet raspberry, cracking woodiness, length and balance. No angles, and right in its prime.

The Savagnin is definitely an oxidative style, with a distinct, nutty vin jaune-y nose. But the palate's dancin', with a keen acidity and buckets of apples, cut by a lemon-pith finish. This was the wine for 'Nduja- the apple played nicely with the pork, and the citrus cut through the fattiness. There's not really an answer for that amount of chilli, but it was close enough.

Soaring with the pigs in the morning.

Nando's

11-12 Friary Street, GU1 4EN. £7

Popular amongst the youth of today is eating chickens. And the best place to eat them alonside other like-minded gang members is, apparently, Nando's.

We untangle a folded menu to reveal a choice of food that must run to at least 10,000 options. There are wings and breasts, sauces and salads, wraps and corn and a mind-boggling array of potato based sides.

Equally confusing is the pointless hybridisation of fast-food and table service, whereby you order at a counter before your food is brought to you at an indiscriminate point in the future.

To stop my head exploding and make life a little easier I decided to focus on only a small part of the menu: the bit nearest me in the bottom left hand corner. This section was titled "Nandino's" and came with an age limit: "For under 10's".

Balls to that, I ordered the Nandino chicken breast stips, corn-on-the-cob, frozen banana yougurt and a beer (Sagres).

I've not come across adjectives suitably damning for what turned up. The chicken was a triumph of aesthetics over edibility. It did at least look a bit like chicken. The corn ran with this theme.

Sagres is Sagres: a relatively inoffesive way to consume a mild anaesthetic, and, as such, a perfect pairing for the food.

Dessert too finds new ways to undermine the traditional dining experience. Firstly it is self service, secondly the recepticle and hence portion size is entirely of your own choosing and lastly it seems to operate on a 1930s style honesty-box system, whereby if you tell them you've paid for dessert they'll let you have it.

We grabbed a couple of plastic coke cups, filled them with 'Frozen Banana Youghurt' and exited the premises. Utterly wonderful stuff. Packed full of that delicious, artificial pick'n'mix-banana-sweet flavour, and with consistency less fatty, coating and cloying than traditional ice cream. Strongly recommended when mixed half and half with rum.

This kind of gutter/stars food dichotomy is difficult to evaluate so all I shall say is that it remains the only restaurant I have visited to which I will only return to steal their ice cream.