Gordita

Bruce Springsteen warmed me up and pig trotters closed the deal.

With its well padded curved booths, large u-shaped bar, street art mural and gorgeous copper lights, Gordita, the latest venue to open at the M&A complex in Fortitude Valley is like a cross between a New York supper club and a Barcelona bar. As with his other venues (Peasant, Cabiria, and Lefty's Old Time Music Hall), owner Jamie Webb has paid great attention to detail. The result is a surprisingly smooth operation that belies it's smell-of-wet-paint newness. The decidedly non-hipster skewed playlist, including Aretha Franklin and Al Green as well as The Boss, is an unexpected treat too.  

As is the pig's trotter, a grossly unrepresented dish on menus in my opinion. Here it's falling-apart tender, a rich plate of rustic porcine goodness. Lovers of pork will appreciate the butter-soft skin and butterknife-tender flesh, the dish further porked up by little nuggets of of salty, fatty morcilla. Oh and there are chickpeas and broad beans in it too.

The rest of the menu, put together by consultant chef Alfonso Ales who hails from Seville, and executed by head chef David Palasi, borrows some dishes from the peasant tradition, such as rabo de toro - Andalusian oxtail stew with "musical" potatoes, while others, like a bomba Catalana - a giant but airy crisp potato croquetta served with a little meat ragu, manchego cheese, and a ying/yang of aioli and salsa brava, are more modern reworkings. A Gallegan-style octopus dish falls into this category, as an interpretation of pulpo a la gallega - a traditional dish of octopus with paprika, garlic and potatoes. It's served here in charry little slices of tender but still al dente octopus with a thinned potato mousseline, crisp dried and fried thin slices of garlic and a seasoning of paprika and olive oil. A word of advice, don't turn down the offer of bread at the start of the meal - each plate pretty much requires a good mopping to get every last bit of sauce.

With a variety of plate sizes, the menu offers scope to go the traditional entree/main route or just graze on a selection of small plates. Next up in the weight category are five "large plates", including stuffed calamari with garlic fried Calasparra rice - the tubes standing to attention in pools of their own ink. It's a good dish, hearty and flavoursome but I think the octopus small plate is a smarter, sharper dish. There are also chicken skewers with couscous and confit garlic, fire-grilled pork loin cutlets with tomato, serrano, olives and mushroom sauce, market fish and a timbale of vegetables with Romesco, black olive tapenade and basil pistou.

Firmly in the heavyweight category is a fire-grilled chuleton  - a thick-cut grass-fed beef T-bone steak served medium rare with piquillo peppers, chips and blue cheese. There's also a  whole roast chicken with herbs, lemon, apple and pancetta.

A trio of desserts, along with a cheese board bring up the rear. Despite the warm afternoon, a chocolate coulant (like a fondant) is not overwhelming; in spite of its gooey liquid centre, it is beautifully, bitterly austere, sitting atop a slice of candied orange and perfectly partnered with a gorgeous orange blossom and vanilla ice-cream.  

And for the final entry on the list of "things I like about Gordita", the wine list is a bit of all right. Broad, interesting and egalitarian with a pick 'n' mix of new and old-world wine priced from $10 for a glass of Barossa sweet Riesling to a $450 bottle of 2010 Descendientes Jose Palacios Moncerbal from Spain. It's helpfully grouped by weight and taste descriptors too, e.g. "light, bright, feminine, pinot noir/gamay"; or "deep dark and powerful", so even if you're not familiar with some of the Spanish and other European wines, you'll have an idea what they may be similar to.

Gordita is the kind of place you immediately want to hang out in, the sort of  place where you'd love to have a regular table and the staff greeting you by name. In fact, I've already pencilled in a couple of Sunday afternoons in a booth with some Springsteen-like tunes, a Moorish mojito (rum, orange, cardamom, mint, lime) and a plate or two of something equally moreish.