Bouzy Rouge

BYO zebra print. Trade winds have long blown a game motif into this corner pub transformed in its own way into a Moroccan souk meets Arabian harem meets game-park safari tent on a Moorish night. It’s a cultural pastiche, sure, beginning with antlers on the outside wall, but it’s also an interior of irony (the disco mirror-ball bull’s head) and just a little French colonial theatricality. So think snails in garlic butter and duck-liver parfait, in a menu steeped otherwise in the robust flavours of the Iberian peninsula. Comfort is king, as with a tomato-based Portuguese seafood stew with risoni pasta, or Spanish paella that is as it should be: smoky, spicy, chorizo-salty, and toasted on its bottom. Tapas range from roasted flat mushrooms with the creamy goodness of leek bechamel sauce with sheep’s milk manchego cheese, to the no-fuss playfulness of a special of anchovy fillets direct from the tin. Rock the kasbah? It’s nightly, with whimsy, and always warmed by the crowd.

AND … Now open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays for churros with molten chocolate.

LOW-DOWN
VIBE Jungle drums and sangria jugs.
BEST BIT The paella.
WORST BIT Occasional service glitches.