‘Now let’s hear some b-sides’: El Kabron, Mount Street, reviewed

It feels like Manchester as a city has for a while had something of a kinship with our friends over in Spain. 

Yes, for decades now cheap flights couldn’t be flung fast enough to the likes of Malaga, Madrid and every provincial airport with a scrap of runway. 

And in turn our restaurants, bars and everything in between often had at least one or two staff members from the peninsula who had made Manchester their home. 

We tend to take it a bit far in thinking we’re more European than most, somehow twinned culturally with the likes of San Sebastian. Derby we are not, but we’re not Barcelona either. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t try. And it starts with eating while you socialise. 

In Blighty we call it ‘binding your stomach’, in Spain, it’s pintxos.

For ten years now La Bandera has been a fixture of the city centre, serving various tapas to open-minded Mancunians and patatas bravas to the picky ones.

In September the restaurant opened a sister venue, El Kabron, a tapas and pintxos bar in the site that for many years was Bowlers cafe, at the back of Central Library with the town hall looming over.  

I’m not sure you could ask for a better spot. Or rather it would be, were it not for the fact the Town Hall - and crucially the handsome and inviting Albert Square surrounding it - has been a building site for seven years and will be for another one at least. 

What a way to choke the life out of a once-bustling dining scene. Those bee mosaic tiles had better sparkle.

So as if to will this European dream into being, on Friday lunchtime I paid a visit to El Kabron with Lily. Always in the interests of our readers (and their bank balances) we seized a Friday that was threatening to bloom into Spring and went for a long lunch of tapas and a bottle of wine. Again, with you in mind. 

We started as I like to with this cuisine, as if the menu was written by the Shipping Forecast; anchovies and G&T starting small, picking up through breads and seafoods deep-fried and otherwise, headwind gathering ahead of secreto iberico, steak and a bottle of soldepenas before calming with moderate to light dessert. Thankfully none of the dishes could be described as ‘occasionally poor’.

The joy of the pinxtos counter is in the lottery of what’s going to be on display. Laid out on little bready plinths there was black pudding and red pepper, courgettes with onion and goats cheese, and seabass and garlic. We could have just hammered through a load of these for lunch, but with a menu to explore decided to start simply with the anchovies and a gin and tonic. I don’t know how but anchovies and a gin and tonic somehow create a sort of negative space in your appetite rather than slowly filling it, only making you more ravenous.

Next up was the pan con tomate (£4.25 for five), a staple of any meal like this but still a potential pitfall when it comes to, as we say, ‘filling up on bread’. The tomato was the right level of garlicky, which is to say you could wilt a sunflower from ten paces after a bite of it - just how it should be. It can be tricky to imbue a bit of oomph in tomatoes and that was the case a bit here. But no matter, nothing is set in stone. Maybe whack one of those anchovies on top of it.

What followed was a trio of fish dishes, an ideal sort of middleweight between the two extremes of tapas; flavorful and moreish smaller bites and the meatier, heavier end of the menu. We chose cod croquetas (£5.50 for three), deep fried baby squid (£6.50) and, somewhat inevitably, gambas in garlic and chilli (£8.50). 

You could of course argue that these are a bit basic but I would call it classic. The croquetas were perfectly battered and fried and the cod was creamy and well seasoned. They’ve won awards and I can see why. The baby squid were again given the right time in the fryer and only needed a splash of lemon to round off the simple but satisfying flavour. Meanwhile the prawns, while nice, weren’t anything extraordinary; on reflection I would now order the seabass in dill and butter sauce instead. Luckily I work round the corner so this will happen very soon.

It would ultimately be a bit weird to not order some iberian pork in a place like this, so order it we did. The secreto iberico (£8.50) arrived with a quill of fennel, both dashed with paprika and salt, and it really didn’t need anything more. The cut, I believe from the shoulder, means you’re getting fat and flavour and when you have a little shard of salt with that what more is really needed? Very well treated, from scoffling acorns to being on the plate, and a beautiful cut of meat. I’ll have it by itself with a pint sometime.

Then it was Bistec a la piparra (steak with pickled Basque peppers). Again a lovely cut and cooked to perfectly pink, it was complimented well by the peppers, however you could have pickled them underground for twenty years and I’d still want them a bit more tart, but then that’s just a matter of personal taste.

There’s often with tapas one dish you order when you don’t really need to, and for me it’s always patatas bravas. I order them almost as a courtesy, or because it feels like no tapas is complete without them. These were perfectly nice - suitably crispy and well seasoned, with a brava sauce that had a good hit of paprika - but next time I’ll go for the vinaigrette of their ensalada mixta salad (£4) in the hopes it’s pungent. 

Finally, and slowing to a crawl after a very pleasant array of dishes, we had to choose dessert (remember this is all for your benefit), and while the almond cake was hugely tempting I think it would have buried me there and then. So it was a light end to things with some churros (£6.95) and a double espresso (£2.95). I’d say we pitched it just right.

El Kabron is due to have a new spring menu any day now, and with it the chance to take things up a notch, experiment and put the greatest hits to one side in favour of some interesting b-sides. 

If they went full on free jazz tapas I’d be all over it; popping in to see what the pintxos of the day are and working my way through a litany of Spanish dishes that few places seem to take a risk on. Honestly, outside of beetroot I’m game for pretty much anything. 

If El Kabron takes the opportunity to gamble on a few dishes, and with it entice in some intrigued customers, you never know what it could lead to. They have taken a risk and I pray it pays off in time for next summer. 

In the meantime, Manchester City Council; throw off the shackles of pavement licences, open up the city for outside food and drink and for fuck’s sake finish that town hall so we can get on with the business of living.  

El Kabron, 2 Mount Street, M2 5WQ