Back to Cardiff, just for 24 hours.
I had booked us for Sunday lunch at Asador 44, a pretty fancy Spanish restaurant located somewhat incongruously in a small grungy lane opposite a depressing multistorey carpark.
The restaurant has nice decor and is cosy. We had a view of the bar:
The Sunday lunch menu:
I’ve cut and pasted this from their website. The one we were given was very slightly different from the online one. For example, grilled aubergine instead of celeriac and no ex-dairy beef mentioned.
Cocktails and cecina to start:
My son had a martini variation, my husband had special called Manzanilla squared which was rum-based and I had a coffee and vanilla Manhattan.
Cecina was made from Black Angus beef. There were 9 slices on the plate originally. I forgot to take a photo before we had inhaled most of it:
The waiter was friendly but a bit nervous. He didn’t spontaneously offer to tell us about the specials so I asked. He had to go and check. Then he came back and told us what they were (whole sea bream and roast shoulder of suckling pig with cider sauce) then he forgot the prices. Then he mixed up the prices. Anyway, with all his nervousness, we thought the sea bream was £80 (yikes, but later we found out it was £18) and the suckling pig was £90 (it was, yikes).
My son had beef carpaccio with onion ketchup , beef fat crumb and aged manchego to start:
My husband and son shared a 500 gram sirloin medium rare. They ordered ‘Sunday sides’ to share, which was a generous array including roast potatoes (these were perfect, according to them), honey glazed carrots, Jerusalem artichokes roasted with a bit of garlic, a gratin of leeks and galmesan cheese and a gigantic Yorkshire pudding with some chorizo in the centre.
I had confit leg of duck on a bed of aged rice with salsa verde. The duck was perfectly cooked with crispy skin and moist meat. The rice was flavoured with some sort of stock and the salsa verde and possibly a bit of morcilla dotted here and there and very nicely complemented the duck.
I saw a couple at an adjacent table get the suckling pig - to me the serving looked very small for £90. For that sort of money I would want an entire piglet!
Again, some hiccups with service at dessert. When I asked what sorbets and ice-cream flavours were available, the server didn’t know. He had to go look. I had already looked so I knew they were out of peach flavour, but he didn’t know that. We got one scoop of Basque cider sorbet and one of Pedro Ximenez and brownie ice cream to share. They were both nice. We preferred the cider sorbet, which was very refreshing and autumnal.
The bill:
We enjoyed this lunch very much, but it’s a bit expensive for what it is. If they had a great view or stellar service, they could probably justify those prices.
