Maresco is a glimmer of independently owned Spanish-Scottish fishiness in Soho, where I’ve eaten less frequently this winter. The capital’s new openings landscape is being overshadowed by “everywhere else not in London” right now, thanks to rents, rates and staff shortages. Budding restaurateurs will find it easier to follow their dream in Somerset or Stockport, where there is more wiggle room to be delightfully odd, and room in the budget to feed guests. Apologies for the grumbling, but the £32 caesar salad (647 calories) at Decimo in King’s Cross finally broke my spirit. Caesar is leaves, old bread and posh salad cream, and this one made me consider a move to Cleethorpes.
Maresco, however, is a small pocket of sanity on the corner of Berwick Street, which is one of the last pleasantly grotty parts of old Soho left, since CrossRail and various mega-investors turned Dean Street’s environs into a shiny glass-fronted retail experience. Maresco is the first Soho opening by Stephen Lironi, who owns Crouch End’s Bar Esteban and Stoke Newington’s Escocesa. Lironi was, and still is, in the band Altered Images with his wife, Clare Grogan. This fact probably delighted me far more than any other customer at Maresco on the Friday evening we went. If only all of my Scottish New Wave 80’s pop loves could open restaurants; Hipsway or Roddy Frame would have been natural hosts. What might Blue Nile have done with tapas?
For Lironi, however, food isn’t merely a side project; it’s clear he’s become rather slick at this restaurant game. Maresco could be just another sit-up-at-the-counter small plates joint, but a flash of blue neon signage and a menu brimming with Scottish seafood make the place a sophisticated place to grab a tall stool and order Isle of Barra razor clams (Barra being the most southerly of the inhabited islands in the Outer Hebrides) or large Loch Broom oysters laced with pale gazpacho.
The menu sings its love of the Scottish coast like a tipsy Proclaimer; Shetland mussels a la plancha, Hebridean langoustine and halibut from the Isle of Gigha. This seafood is transformed by an army of Spanish chefs who run Maresco’s open kitchen with brisk intensity, turning out plates of bocadillo de calamar and fideua. The fishy, noodley joy of fideua is rarely seen in Britain, which is odd as we took to ramen furiously; here at Maresco it is a dark, umami fug of carbs topped with meaty pink prawns. Maresco’s spin on patatas bravas – baby potatoes, steamed, crushed by hand then hurled into hot oil and served in spicy garlicky goo – is unmissable.
The food here is a mixture of crowdpleasing classics served with aplomb, large slabs of generous pan con tomate and hot, fresh chipirones, fried baby squid, or croquetas menorquinas with sobresada, but then there’s the innovative, like the Bomba Maresco – one large, fearsome, deep-fried tempura-bound sphere of Shetland mussels on a fennel sofrito. This isn’t just British-Spanish tapas – shop-bought chorizo cooked in red wine served to backing track of Flamenca Classics on K-Tel, but neither is it dainty, suggestions of dinner made by people obsessed with El Bulli.
Maresco has a seated area downstairs and window ledges for watching the passing pedestrians, but the counter is the best spot to be, possibly armed with a pisco sour or a Muy Margarita. They made me an excellent spicy virgin mary which changed my feelings towards cold tomato juice for ever.
Maresco is a singular vision of how diners might enjoy the best of two worlds: the cut and thrust of Peterhead fish market and a night out in Palma, Mallorca.
There is meat on the menu if you can’t stand fish, by the way; the Highland venison, served almost rare, comes on a sweet jerusalem artichoke puree with a vibrant grape mustard. If vegetables are your thing, please note that the charcoal cauliflower with a sharp slick of mojo verde and pomegranate made me all kinds of ecstatic. The white bean salad sounds like nothing much on paper but it a plentiful stack of fresh beans, black olive and roasted pepper that would easily, with a side of potatoes, make a fabulous main course. There was also a dish of charcoal leeks with romesco sauce that I have on my “next-time” list.
Dessert-wise, it was my duty to try to the Basque cheesecake – which is absolutely the authentic type being pushed out in San Sebastian and Bilbao – crustless, perilously soft, nearly collapsing and pleasingly whiffing of actual cheese. What happened to cheesecake in Britain? Why do we negate the oomph of the cheese and mask it in blackberry compote or Biscoff or chocolate chips? Give me a cheesecake like Maresco’s any day: so cheesy that it feels slightly punishing to eat, but I won’t relinquish a single spoonful. There is also a cinnamon bread pudding – torrijas – that they’re serving with crema catalana ice-cream.
Soho may be feeling safer and more snoozy by the month, but the Scots and the Spanish are guarding Berwick Street beautifully.
Maresco 45 Berwick Street, London W1, 020-7439 8483. Open Mon-Sat, lunch noon-3.30pm, dinner 5-11pm. From about £35 a head, plus drinks and service.
