Sacha

This restaurant is in the north of the city, near the Paseo de la Castellana. It was established in 1972 by a couple, Carlos Hormaechea and Pitila Mosquera. Their son Sacha Hormaechea now runs the restaurant, which serves Spanish food with a Galician influence. The place is tucked away in a quiet side street in a residential area, next to a large Brazilian meat restaurant. The dining room has a cosy, old fashioned feel to it, and was full of locals on the Monday evening when I visited. Lighting was very low, hence the limited and murky photos.

The kitchen offered a selection of their specialties, so we tried these rather than ordering a la carte. Anchovies were pleasant though not of dazzling quality (13/20), while fried artichoke crisps had good texture and were enjoyable (14/20). Local tomato bread was also nicely made, with tomatoes that had real flavour (14/20). The best dish by some way was a raviolo of spider crab, with pasta that had excellent texture and a filling of fresh crab enlivened by a little red chilli; this was genuinely classy (16/20). A porcini omelette was cooked just on one side, and had good quality mushrooms (13/20). Sea bass was reasonable, offered with a few rather overcooked vegetables, though its texture suggested that this was of lesser quality than the crab (12/20). Better was beef served with bone marrow separately, the beef of high quality and cooked and seasoned carefully, the bone marrow having good depth of flavour (15/20). For dessert I had a Galician dish called folloas, a crepe in syrup, which was fine if unexciting (13/20).

Overall this was a very pleasant neighbourhood restaurant, whose best speciality dishes were very good indeed. Service was friendly and the bill, with a glass of sherry and plenty of Spanish wine, came to €81 (£65) a head, which was not unreasonable for what we had.