Lifestyle: Restaurant Review – El Borracho de Oro, Birmingham

AS I mentioned in a recent review of city centre eatery Amantia, Birmingham is increasingly clicking its heels and flicking its skirts to the beat of Spanish cuisine.

And at the forefront of this must be counted El Borracho de Oro, which is to be found at the city centre end of Edgbaston.

Translated as ‘the person who gets drunk on fine wines and the best liquors’, this tapas specialist is a decent-sized venue with plenty of wood, banquettes and wall hangings, giving it that ‘grand Spanish’ feel.

It’s a place where it is worth taking your time over a meal in that traditional Mediterranean way.

There’s a lunchtime offer of two tapas for £6.95 but to give you a better idea of what’s on offer more broadly (oh the sheer altruism of it) we selected a number of dishes from a wider menu (still all tapas, mind).

I have to say at the outset that undergoing the misery of dry January when undertaking this review I can’t help you on the venue’s wine selection or other alcoholic temptations. My partner did enjoy a Summer Breeze, a non-alcoholic cocktail of elderflower, strawberry puree and cranberry juice (£6.95), however, declaring it a “wow”. Each to their own.

With the help and advice of our friendly waitress from Bilbao, we finally settled on five dishes and some rustic bread.

The Galician bread with olive oil and tomato (£3) was a revelation and was proof, if ever it were needed, that the combination of the simplest of ingredients can create something that tastes like the food of the gods.

My dining companion and I agreed that we could have simply eaten this and nothing else and gone away thinking we had had a memorable lunch.

But we wouldn’t short change you like that dear reader and so we were soon on to the morcilla, manzana asada y huevo de codorniz (£4) which translates as Spanish black pudding with roasted green apple and a quail’s egg.

Now black pudding has always been a ‘super food’ as a far as I’m concerned so I took litlle prompting to plump for this particular dish and I wasn’t disappointed.

It was as lovely a piece of blood-based sustenance as you could wish to meet and the apple and quail’s egg set it off beautifully.

It left me wondering whether the universal love of ‘le pudding noire’ could be something that smooths out the differences between people as we move forward. It’s a thought.

My partner’s choice came next. For some reason unknown to man nor beast she decided she wanted to try the deep fried roasted dogfish with roasted pear (£6.50).

I wasn’t keen. When you think of the great combinations – cheese and pickle, fish and chips, Gary Shaw and Peter Withe – dogfish and pear doesn’t spring to mind but I thought it only fair to spread the largesse when it came to dish selection.

It is a meaty fish but, annoyingly, is left with a bone in it after cooking.

The pear puree was, thankfully, not overpowering and helped to refresh what could otherwise be quite a heavy dish.

I still wouldn’t choose it myself but I couldn’t knock its execution or flavour combinations.

More to my taste was the rabo de toro (£8.50) which is oxtail with sweet potato and shallots caramelised in crème de cassis.

I’ve always liked oxtail and this was using it to its full potential. The meat fell away from the bone and worked beautifully with the ‘drunken’ mash. Probably my favourite dish of the lunch.

But more was to come and next up was the rice dish of the day which came with prawns and chicken (£12).

Like any paella or paella-style dish this is cooked from fresh so can take a while to arrive. It’s worth the wait, though, if – like me – you think Spanish rice dishes are manna from heaven.

Our final dish also came in at £12 and was cochinillo de Segovia or suckling pig with acid apple and kumquat.

This delicious dish had us meat lovers purring. It isn’t the largest of servings but quality is everything here.

The renaissance of pork in all its forms over the last few years has been one of the more positive food trends and is doesn’t get much better than suckling pig in my humble opinion.

And kumquats instead of apple sauce? It really does add something. Pork chops and kumquat sauce for me one night next week I think. 

One point about El Borracho de Oro. Dishes can vary quite markedly in price – our meal covered dishes ranging from £4 to £12 – so if you are on a tight budget it might be worth choosing from the aforementioned set menu or at least being aware that things can go up steeply at the speciality end of things.

All in all we enjoyed a wonderful lunch and if the waitress wasn’t as interested in my story about watching Aston Villa beat Athletic Bilbao in the 1977/78 UEFA Cup as I would have hoped, let’s just put it down to the fact that she was busy.

Recommended.

El Borracho de Oro is at Harborne Court, Harborne Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 3BU. Tel: 0121 454 5368.