Dehesa

C says:

Ever since Wolf closed, we've been looking for a place that does proper nose-to-tail cooking. Dehesa could well be it.

 

We started with the Dehesa platter, which came with a serving of sourdough and the most amazing aioli ever. The platter composed saucisson, chorizo, lomo Iberico, jamon, home-made lardo, fifi pate, pig's head terrine, rillette and crispy crackling. 

The duck hearts on toast came with a heavenly sauce that had hints of black pepper, balsamic and honey. 

Instead of crispy pig's ears, they have crispy tripe here, with fried garlic oil and a romesco sauce studded with chilli padi. With its flowery exterior, honeycomb tripe really does take deep frying really well - light and crispy, yet still retaining the slight chewiness of tripe. 

The Octopus is served on a bed of mashed potatoes, and blanketed with more lardo slivers. Just before serving, the chef comes with a hugeass blowtorch and torches the lardo so that it melts into the octopus. Aburi lardo. Divine. 

I expected the crispy pig's head to be more, well, head-y. Instead, it came as a croquette of sort, with egg yolk and lardons. Perhaps a little too generic for my liking.

We ordered the Frit Mallorquin because we've never seen it anywhere else. Basically it's a stew made from lamb offal (here, it was heart, liver, kidney and sweetbreads) and Mediterranean vegetables. It was interesting and pretty tasty, but at the same time it was quite heavy so I don't think we'll order it again.

We ordered one dish too many, so we didn't have space for dessert, which looked really interesting. We've already got a list of other dishes that we're going to try next time.

A says:

Great value and a surprisingly non-poncey place. Would go back, especially for the lardo.