Moro

34-36 Exmouth Market
London
EC1R 4QE

With J&A in town, we decided to try out Moro which several friends had raved about. Perhaps our expectations were raised too high, but I found it mildly disappointing. Our favorite part of the meal were the tapas that we ordered to start -grilled chorizo, piquillo peppers, fried chickpeas (especially nice!) and tortilla (also an exemplary dish). Things all fell down a bit when we got to mains - A and I shared the wood roasted chicken with chermoula and cooked Moroccan salads and the charcoal grilled lamb chops with garlic purée and slow cooked green beans, while J&A had wood roasted pork with turnips cooked with sherry vinegar, lentils and slow cooked piquillo peppers and pan fried bream with clams, scapes and salsa verde with new potatoes. A left quite a lot of her bream, saying it tasted extremely fishy, and it was also swimming in an oily pool of liquid. J thought the pork was pretty fatty, and while the chicken and lamb were decently cooked, there was nothing special enough about them to justify the high prices. 

Drinks were slightly better - a Manzanilla sherry - La Goya Delgado Zuleta- went down quite well to start, and we had a chilled Borsao (Garnacha/Syrah/Tempranillo) Joven Seleccion Campo de Borja, Spain '09 to go with our mains. Service was polite, but somehow the whole meal was underwhelming and I doubt I'll be back, considering how much it cost. A much better option, I think, is to go next door to Morito for the tapas - which we did a few weeks later.