Iberica

140 St Vincent Street, Glasgow

0141 530 7985

Lunch/Dinner: £18-£35

Food rating: 8/10

MONIKA Lavery, who founded the Spanish food importer, Brindisa, has just published a wonderful new book on Spanish food that deserves the classic status accorded to everything written by Elizabeth David. In it she explains how Franco steered Spain towards industrial food production and higher yields. When he died in 1975, a “neo-rural” movement of sons and daughters of farmers left their city jobs and returned to the countryside to set up artisan businesses, rediscovering local traditions, breeds, and varieties. Brindisa pioneered the availability of these culinary gems to switched-on chefs and specialist food shops in the UK, so you can now get some exceptionally fine, truly special small-scale Spanish foods if you know where to look.

But what happens if you try to scale it up, as is the case with Iberica? The eponymous restaurant chain is relatively small by current standards, a mere 11 branches, the latest just opened in Glasgow looking handsome, sophisticated, and exciting. The name pays homage to Spain’s most celebrated air-dried ham, from animals descended from the ancient breed of wild black Iberico pig, referred to as “pata negra” after the black hoof which stays on the whole ham leg as it is cured and carved. Glasgow’s Iberica has a delicatessen counter of lovingly sourced products (a collection of olive oils, three different hams, preserved fish and vegetables, traditional nougat, and freshly made bocadillos to eat at the bar or take away). Dashing Spaniards talk you through the choices, and slice to order. Eight carefully selected cheeses include Torta de Trujillo, a sheep’s milk cheese from Extramadura made with thistle rennet, and Blau de Bufala, produced in Catalonia from water buffalo milk. Don’t get me started on the wine list; it’s equally fascinating and unusual. Iberica’s menu is curated by Nacho Manzano, a chef with three Michelin stars to his name, but the food here isn’t fancy, more like authentic everyday Spanish.

We easily get through a bowl of quality green olives stuffed with anchovies before Juan Pedro Domecq’s Jabugo ham turns up, cured for a minimum of 42 months, no less. Such patience! And the wait is worth it. A tiny shaving of this work of culinary art literally fills the mouth with sweet, sublime, aromatic flavours. Its fat is divine. It takes savouriness to a high that could only be rivalled by the finest Italian Culatello. So Iberica is welcome for this edible offering alone.

But there are more good things in the cooked department. Aubergine, so often a trial in the UK, is a paper-crisp slipper encasing flesh dissolving under its honey and toasted pine nut surface. As we devour the green peas, spiked with a fistful of chopped Serrano ham, a sticky-sweet tomato sauce, and a soft poached egg to coat it, I make a mental note to remember it as a simple, satisfying weekday meal.

A bowl of oozing rice, black and fishily savoury from the addition of cuttlefish ink and a few prawns and squid rings, strokes the comfort centres of the brain in a similar manner. Whole spring onions look like green ethereal twists inside their diaphanous, brittle tempura batter. We dip them in lemon alioli, a nice one that tastes as if fresh garlic has been used. Chorizo “lollipops” (fat slices of meaty paprika sausage) come in the same batter, but it doesn’t suit their fatty, muscular heft – shades of a Scottish sausage supper – and the accompanying “pear aioli” is just sweet, not fragrant, so it makes this offering more clumsily ill-matched. But the supple, airy salt cod fritters with their slow-release fish flavour go down a treat, although by this point, I’m bored with yet another serving of alioli.

Torrija, listed as “brioche with red wine syrup and apricot coulis”, seems to have lost its wine syrup. This yeasty bread, caramelised on top, disgorges milky liquor. Served with vanilla-stippled ice cream and sugary crumbs, it’s just too sweet. This isn’t the only surprise: our “apricot” sorbet turns out to be mango. But who comes to Iberica for dessert? It’s a stylish place to be and a visit is worth it just for the ham.