The gain from Spain

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Tapas should please all five senses. Jill Turton sees if Ambiente in York makes the grade. Pictures by Gerard Binks.

Not in England it’s not. Tapas may be nearly as ubiquitous as chicken tikka masala, but we haven’t yet perfected the “myriad of tempting appetisers” much less a tour. We’ve developed tapas restaurants instead, at worst, chains of them with a surfeit of soulless albondigas, soggy patatas bravas and clammy slabs of spanish omelette.

It’s usually fabulous in Spain, of course, as in Barcelona where the innovative cooking of El Bulli has filtered down to new-wave tapas bars. Or in San Sebastian, where wandering from bar to bar in the old quarter enjoying the competitive displays of dozens of different tapas, is a revelation. It can go wrong, too; a slice of bread topped with sweating factory cheese, factory ham and spiked with an olive doesn’t pass as acceptable tapas in my book, even if it is Bilbao.

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In Yorkshire, we do have El Gato Negro, the wonderful tapas pub in Ripponden, which could show Bilbao a thing or two, and now, in York, we have Ambiente, a superior tapas operation recently relocated from Malton.

They’ve done a splendid job on making over their Goodramgate premises from its former lives as the Codfather chippy and a budget Italian. There are sofas and cushions to lounge around on in the bar, discreet booths out the back, and a nice collection of polished oak furniture in the upstairs rooms that sits well against the wooden floorboards and contemporary grey/black walls.

In true Spanish style, it all feels very relaxed, very Ambiente. We’re here with our neighbours, a full-blooded pair not known for holding back whether it’s the latest gossip, clearing a decent plate of food or calling for a second bottle. Which in this case, since they’d run out of house red, was a perfectly respectable £13.95 Crianza. It more than did its job, namely brokering Alicia Rios’s perfect marriage between drink and food.

As for the food, the tapas menu is unusually ambitious, confidently taking influences from France, Italy, Spain and Morocco with all sorts of nibbles and sharing platters of meat, seafood and vegetables, hot and cold tapas, lots of vegetarian dishes, and paella for two.

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The cold tapas list read well enough with the likes of manchego with quince jelly, dates wrapped in ham, toasted bread with tomato and garlic and anchovy fillets, but the hot tapas looked even better and we chose three each for sharing. Of the 12 dishes, which averaged out at £4.50 each, nearly all were excellent, decisively flavoured and well executed.

The stand-outs were black pudding and scotch egg, cod with lemon butter sauce, lamb patties with minted yoghurt and herb oil, green beans with sun-dried tomatoes and pinenuts, meatballs with a chilli and lemongrass sauce, mixed fish in beer batter, mozzarella and risotto croquettes. We particularly liked the lovely melting mozzarella in the croquettes, the deep savoury black pudding around a quail’s egg, the tender lamb patties and the beautifully battered fish. It was all highly assured.

Less good, but by no means disastrous, were the patatas bravas where the potatoes were not crisp enough nor the sauce spicy enough for our taste. The smoked haddock and celeriac fishcakes were more potato than fish. Only our wild card choice, the banana and butternut squash curry, didn’t sit right with all the other dishes. It was just too sweet and the strong flavour of the banana overwhelmed the spices.

Having by-passed starter nibbles, three dishes per head was plenty, maybe even a little greedy; we left 12 clean plates but only two of us had room to share a dessert, a rich, gooey cheesecake promising fig and amaretto which would have benefited from a more generous tilt of the bottle.

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The conclusion of all four, though, was that we liked Ambiente a lot. We liked its laid-back attitude, its cheerful service, its liberal opening hours and its varied menu.

Back to Alicia Rios for her conclusion on tapas at their best: “The art of tapeo is like a baroque, sybaritic game, as it pleases the five senses by means of the multifarious smells, the friendly pats on the back, the sight of beauty on the street. It induces states of inspiration and delight, it gives rise to witty banter on trivial topics and the interchange of snippets of juicy gossip”.

We didn’t see much beauty on the street. In fact, the entertainment was watching the police marching off someone on suspicion of shoplifting an electric kettle. But we left Ambiente with a feeling somewhere pretty close to delight.

Ambient Tapas Restaurant, 14 Goodramgate, York YO1 7LQ. 01904 689784; [email protected]; www.ambiente-tapas.co.uk. Open: Every day, 10am-9.30pm. Price: About £50 for two, including wine, coffee and service.

The correct details for Jeremy’s Restaurant, in Scarborough, which we reviewed recently are: Sunday lunch 12-3pm, £15.95 for two courses, £18.95 for three courses. Opening hours Wed-Sat 6pm-9.30pm.