Twist Connubio — Restaurant in London

Twist at Crawford in Marylebone, near Edgware Road tube station, does outstanding Spanish tapas. Delicious meats, great flavours, lovely service - definitely a restaurant I will visit again.

Spanish Tapas restaurant Twist at Crawford opened in early 2015, bringing more excellent Spanish food to Marylebone. The decoration is very typical for new openings these days, industrial shabby-chic, exposed brick walls, hipster light bulbs. A combination that should perhaps best be forbidden outside designated areas of urban edginess. Still, Twist in beautiful Marylebone somehow manages to add a little bit of Spanish authenticity to the mix beyond the standard urban-cool decoration.

Staff were very friendly and helpful in the selection of dishes and continued to deliver good service throughout my visit.

I started with a white wine, the Madregale Bianco Chardonnay-Trebbiano 2013. They had more interesting wines on the menu, but unfortunately they were only available by the bottle. That said, the Chardonnay-Trebbiano was an enjoyable wine, and surprisingly one of the waiters complimented my choice, as in some parts of Italy, people would also drink white wine with cured meat, he explained. Good to know - often, people expect that you have to drink a red wine with cured meat and cheese.

The first dish that arrived at my table was the Paleta iberica de bellota D.O. Reserva 24 months. This basically means, that it was an extensively matured Iberican black pig ham, and as the menu added, it is "nominated best jamon in the world". I am not a big fan of fatty meat, but in this case, the thinky sliced ham tasted great and the fat just added to the flavour.

The meat was served with thin, crispy Sardinian bread. I was a bit skeptical first and ordered a bread basket in addition to these thin bread chips, but really, the ham and this Sardinian bread was a perfect combination. The other two kinds of bread were too sweet and too dense for my liking.

Not long after the ham, my second plate arrived, roasted chicken thighs, chili, honey and toasted macadamia almonds. I was prepared for chicken pieces on the bone, but was happy to see only boneless chicken, as I find it in general much easier to eat without having to cut around the bones. More importantly, the chicken thighs were one of the best chicken dishes I can remember.

The juicy chicken and the sweet sauce together were a heavenly blend of flavours. Finally, the slightly sweet cumin bread also came to good use, when I soaked the remaining chicken sauce up with it, after I had finished the chicken thighs.

I rounded off my meal with the lovely fleur de sel chocolate tart. A cold, rich delight with a strong chocolate taste and a pinch of salt.

The individual dishes were small, as you expect for tapas, but two of them were filling and left enough space for the dessert.

Overall, I was very happy with the portion sizes as well as the friendly and...

Nice ambiance and lovely Jazz when we visited. However a restaurant is ultimately about food, and this is where Twist falls short. It is the worst kind of tapas: you overpay for small portions of mediocre food. The chef tries to reinvent classic dishes, but more often than not, the reinventions don't work.

Example: the bone marrow. For 12 pounds, it arrives as one small portion, with almost no marrow in it. But it does have caviar on top! The strange caviar-marrow combination didn't work. One has to wonder if the caviar was added to be able to charge more for the marrow, which can usually be obtained for free at a butcher shop.

The marrow came with nothing to eat it with. Good marrow is like butter. It is much more pleasant to eat on bread, preferably toasted to provide contrast, than to have directly with a spoon. By itself, it is just greasy.

We asked for toasted bread to eat it with. After giving us a strange look, the server brought untoasted bread, with olive oil and anchovy butter, as if to underline that the marrow was to be eaten separately. The bread was stale.

The manager noticed our displeasure. After we explained that the bone had no marrow in it, he told us that the bone weighed 450 grams (not sure what it weighed, but not really relevant!). When we said that we asked for toasted bread with the marrow, he condescendingly said that this is not supermarket bread, it is homemade, and so should be eaten fresh. I suppose one can debate whether it is appropriate to ask for bread to be toasted in the oven first so it will hold up its shape for eating with foie gras or marrow. One cannot debate whether one should serve bread that is stale and dry (see picture).

Other dishes: the oyster mushrooms were drowning in oil and lousy. The octopus and potatoes were good, although the potatoes were slightly undercooked. The courgette flower was delicious, although note that you are charged per flower. My Spanish partner was insistent that the tortilla was incorrect -- the outside being "dry" and the inside being runny. I liked it, although found it a bit salty.

To his credit, the manager did give us 15% off following our complaints, but only after disputing the merit of our complaints and insinuating that we were unsophisticated. Oh, and they left on a charge for 4 pounds for the...

I can’t enthuse enough about this restaurant, a Spanish and an Italian Tapas-type place that’s so good! I’ve been here twice now, and the first time I went with a group of friends (all committed carnivores) and we like to eat. A lot! Everybody in the room enthused over the Josper -grilled slabs of meat, the octopus, the Iberico pork, and many many more more dishes, and I can’t think why I haven’t been back before yesterday. This time I took my girlfriend along (who’s a pescatarian) and we had a great time. We started with Pan Y Tomate and the wittily named ‘Looks like a courgette flower’ - as courgette flowers are out of season, it’s a dish designed to look like, yes, a courgette flower, which it was really tasty, as were the grilled prawns. We followed with the tuna tartare which was so light and tasty. She had a daily special gnocchi dish of goats cheese, some honey and pea pesto which was delicious. I also had a special of Iberia belotta Pluma, with a swirl of homemade mayo with chive oil, some stuffed peppers which where incredible and a slice of potato loveliness (which I’d had on the previous visit) and it was simply devine. All washed down with a bottle of Albarino. We finished with a burnt Basque cheesecake which was very very good, with the suggested wine pairing of a Pedro ximenez sherry. This was one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time and can’t wait to go back. Highly...