It doesn’t take you long to realise that the owner of the Restaurant Siller takes a real pride in the food he serves. And he’s right to be – it really is a cracker of a restaurant, serving good quality local food at reasonable prices. Every neighbourhood everywhere deserves its own version of the Siller.
Bread and Olives quickly arrive. The bread is homemade and comes as “pa amb oli”, with the tomato and olive oil both grown/produced from the owner’s finca. The bread is dense, chewy and tasty. The tomato is fresh and sweet. The oil the absolute essence of olive fruitiness. It’s one of the best things I’ve put in my mouth all year.
Vegetable soup comes in a tureen and a large bowl is served. The tureen is left in case second helpings are needed (they weren’t). It’s full of beans – obviously tinned butter, black-eye and kidney beans, mixed with fresh green and runner beans. Carrots, courgette, celery and cabbage added more textures and flavours. Absolutely superb.
A “special” starter of figs and sobrasada almost worked. Great concept and the intent was surely to have the sobrasada act as a salty, savoury contrast to the sweetness of the figs roasted with honey. But it needed much, much more to work. Even with the scattering of pine nuts, this seemed more a dessert than starter.
We both had the fillet steak which comes on a “sizzling“ plate allowing it to finish cooking as you want it. In a great act of showmanship, the meat is carved at the table, the thickness of the slices dependent on how done you want the end result to be. It’s dressed with oil, pepper and salt – too much salt, truth be told. But it is a fine piece of meat, which finishes round about medium rare and, salt aside, is delicious.
The showmanship is not restricted to serving steak. Another customer had ordered lamb chops. These are served from a wooden bowl in which a small bundle of hay was set alight. Certainly catches the attention as it’s carried through the room – even though I’m not a great fan of this sort of affectation.
A bowl of fried potatoes is served with our steaks and some green beans – both again from the owner’s finca. Spuds were particularly tasty.
No dessert but good “café solo” is served. We’d had water and my life companion had seen off most of a bottle of Macia Batle. Service had been fine, although the kitchen seemed quite slow in getting food out. Bill came to €96.