I had heard a lot of good things about this Moorish restaurant in the trendy pedestrianised street of Exmouth Mkt and I was not disappointed. Excellent fayre with knowledgeable staff is a not an easy combination to accomplish.

Moro has an open kitchen, which I always quite like and I think adds to the atmosphere in most restaurants. It’s situated within an open and light room, with a long bar running along the side of the restaurant which added to the informal atmosphere. The wooden floors gave an indication of the robust, no-nonsense approach Moro takes with it’s food.

Having been to a few Spanish restaurants recently, my dining partner and I obliged etiquette by starting with an aperitif of sherry. I went for the Oloruso and she went for the Fino. The Oloruso was the more complex due to the fact that all Oloruso’s are oxidized for longer, to develop the flavour. Fino sherries are the driest and lightest of sherries. Both went down well!

The menu wasn’t large, but pretty well proportioned nonetheless, with several ingredients neither of us had heard of. The waiter had no issues with our questions and answered knowledgeably and without condescension, before patiently giving us more time to further contemplate our choices. In addition to our sherries, we had a bottle of the Nostrada Tempranillo, which was pretty reasonably priced at less than £13 a pop and quite light, which suited the summer evening just fine.

To start, I went for the Pan fried morcilla with broad beans and mint on toast. Morcilla is effectively black pudding, but it was pretty light and worked well with the broad beans and mint. My partner went for the Anchovy and lemon butter on toast with radish salad, which was again given the light touch without compromising on taste.

It was the main courses where Moro really started to shine. My partner’s Wood roasted butterflied mackerel with paprika, garlic and parsley was perfectly cooked and had absolutely none of the slight bitterness mackerel quite often has. My Wood roasted Middle White pork with slow cooked potatoes with peas and sweet anis  was absolutely divine. The addition of anis to the dish had initially caught my eye and it worked amazingly well in the soft, luxurious taste and texture of the potatoes. The pork was surprisingly tender with a good hard crackling on the outside and I was pretty much in heaven, tucking into this dish.

Due to the generous portions of the main courses, we took a while deciding about dessert, before choosing to share the

Yoghurt cake with pistachios and fresh cherries. It was kind of like a deluxe, collapsed cheese cake and despite our bulging bellies, we had no problem in finishing this off in record time.

I think Moro is an excellent restaurant and one which I would not hesitate to recommend. The service was of a very high standard and the food very good indeed. You could argue that the pricing was a little on the expensive side (the starters were around  £7.50 each and the mains around the£17 mark) but it still felt value for money when we settled the bill.