There are many plus points about living a short walk from Exmouth Market, and the proximity of Morito is surely one of them. The husband and wife team Sam and Sam Clarke who have run the successful restaurant Moro for 15 years opened a baby sibling next door nearly two years ago. It espouses the Moorish cooking to which the Clarkes introduced London, with an emphasis on the Spanish style of eating.

There are dishes from the Moro East cookbook such as beetroot borani with feta and walnuts £4, which would win over even the most avid beetroot hater, and the fried whole prawns £6.50 had such a light and crispy crust, it was tempting to eat them whole, shell and all. My companion and I also had the salt cod croquettes £4.50, and a perfect tortilla with potato, onion and wild garlic.
The menu is endlessly tempting, and fans of the Moro cookbooks will recognise other gems like the cauliflower with saffron, pine nuts and raisins £4.50. Meat eaters will like the slow roast pork belly with cumin and lemon, or the butifarra sausage with white beans and alioli.

It was one of those recent rainy days this week with hot sun in the afternoon, so sitting outside with a glass of ice cold fino to accompany was just the ticket. A bit more room too for my 6′ 4″ guest for whom the cosy tables inside are a bit cramped.

So it was with excitement and high expectations that I finally made it to Morito, situated next door to its big sister (or brother – I’m not sure what gender restaurants are meant to be). Again, it may be slightly tenuous to include what is, in essence, a Spanish tapas bar here, but, like its elder sibling, Morito is heavily influenced and inspired by the food of the Middle East. Furthermore, while the wonderful Moro still remains the kind of restaurant which should be saved for special occasions, if I had the means you’d probably see me in Morito every evening and the odd lunchtime too.

It’s just so welcoming; a relaxed, unpretentious air somehow combined with the heaving throng of people squashed into a space which should be far too small. Yet, rather than feeling overcrowded, it feels intimate and cosy, the collective masses simultaneously enjoying the wondrous food. Enthused, slightly tipsy chatter oscillates with almost perfect synchronicity, as dish after dish flies out of the kitchen, each as delectable as the last. Furthermore, it’s the little Arab touches which add so much, elevating this above your standard London tapas offering. Little earthenware pots on the tables are filled with za'atar and sumac, while dishes such as spiced lamb, aubergine, yoghurt and pine nuts, the rich, earthy flavours melding together effortlessly, clearly have at least one foot in the Middle East. Flat breads, still warm from the oven, sprinkled with more za’atar, bring the aromas of Lebanon to the table and are served with Tunisian harissa, sweet, tart and ever so slightly spicy. Meanwhile, other dishes, clearly taken straight out of Spain, such as chicharrones de Cadiz, or slow roasted pork belly with cumin and lemon, unctuously soft and full of brash flavour, represent the vast Moorish influence on the country’s food heritage.

Of course, delights such as mini sea bass fillets with lemon, grilled to perfection; scallops served with chorizo, expertly balanced so as the deep, smoky sausage doesn’t overpower; salt cod croquetas, crunchy yet soft and delightful; or the waitress’s recommendation, pork fillet with fennel and quince alioli, flawless in both thought and execution, are predominantly Spanish in inspiration. Yet, it’s the wonderfully polygamous marriage of these different cuisines which is perhaps the most appealing aspect of an evening at Morito. Throw in some jamon iberico de bellota, the sweet acorn taste emanating through the plump, salty pig, and you’re not far off from a little bit of heaven in North London.

There's little to the design beyond wipe-clean orange surfaces and a central bar behind which the chefs work, plus a smattering of small tables and stools around the sides. The focus is firmly on the food - and what food.

Andalusian-style ajo blanco, made with fine-ground almonds and spiked with sherry vinegar, was silky smooth, served Malaga-style with a few sweet muscat grapes. The richness of chicharrones (made from slow-cooked pork belly that is then cooked until crisp on the plancha grill), was cut with cumin and lemon. Slices of crisp-fried aubergine, topped with Spanish molasses, skillfully blended savoury and sweet, as did salt cod salad with pine nuts, dill and sweet orange.

I'll get back to that. Salad of chopped octopus; lamb chops flavoured with cumin; a beetroot dish that was like a hummus made out of borscht and spiked with feta and walnuts – that was great, and I say that as someone who doesn't like beetroot. The two stars of the meal were chiccarones – small squares of pork belly, again flavoured with cumin – and fried chickpeas, recommended by the waiter, which came with chopped tomatoes, chilli and coriander, and were a spicy, crunchy, compulsive treat.

In total, three of us shared 14 dishes. That may sound a lot, but it wasn't, because the portions are small. At the time, I felt that the prices were a little toppy, but on looking again I see that they aren't, not for central London – our food bill was £70 for three. But a "Sevillian goat's cheese nipple" at £1.50 was literally a single nipple of cheese; a £6 scallop was literally one scallop; a £4.50 quail egg with ham on toast was literally one quail egg. All were delicious – the scallop in albariño sauce especially so – but we did feel the portions were on the very small side of small, and you need to order a lot of these tapas dishes to make a meal. If I were local to Morito, which I'm unfortunately not, I'd be tempted to use it more in a quick-drink-and-bite-after-work Spanish style than in a full-meal-of-tapas British manner.

Spanish wine has been improving at an astonishing rate for two decades, and the list at Morito reflects that; it also gives you a chance to reacquaint with the fact that sherry is the best-value great wine in the world. The wines are served in chunky tumblers rather than in glasses. I don't like that, and your grumpy old relative won't like it, either – what's the point of serving good wine and then diminishing the experience of tasting it? Hmph. There's no booking at Morito, which is tapas-bar authentic, but can mean that you might be in for a wait. I went at lunchtime, on purpose, because I wanted to avoid the evening rush. I'm told they get slammed; I can believe it.

It’s a tapas place. No, no, come back. You can book tables, even at lunch, and it doesn’t smell. You squeeze through the door into the bustling little room and take your seat at a tiny table, crammed in with a couple of mates, on which is a basket of those weird little dog biscuits that the Spanish love and a roll or two, and you look up at the white board over the counter and you grab a guy and you point up at it and you go, “I’ll have one of those, and one of those, and two of those, and – how big is that? – okay, just the one, and then one of those and, ooh, you have those? I haven’t seen those in England before, well we’ll definitely have some of those, and then we’ll have, wait, have we got too much? Okay forget those, we’ll start with this stuff and see how we feel. Actually, we will have them, put them back on. And can we get three sherries pronto?”

And he plonks down a carafe of tap and three glasses and then comes back a couple of minutes later with three ice-frosted schooners of La Guita manzanilla. And then the food starts coming: tiny puntillitas, the babiest of baby squid, no bigger than spiders, deep-fried, dry and salty; three discs of freshest scallop in albariño; gözleme, a soft flatbread served hot in triangles with feta and spinach; some stunning fried chickpeas, like crispy corn snacks, with chopped tomato; chunkily chopped raw venison, rich and ferrous, barely seared with a piquillo pepper sauce; beetroot borani, which is a pale pink, beetrooty fool (why do I think of Ed Balls?) studded with feta and walnuts; a giant, dark brown, rather oily kibbe, exploding with ground lamb and pine nuts; deep-fried Cornish anchovies as big as sardines, incredibly fresh, to be snarfed down heads and all; some okay croquetas de jamón; an unusual, pale, crunchy tabouleh; a fold of ham on tomato toast and oh, oh God, the chicarones de Cadiz, which were little dark chunks of pork belly, slow-roasted with cumin and lemon, that were sweet and dry and sour and salty; and some big juicy lamb chops charred at the edges and then, then the stand-out dish.
Not just the stand-out but the stand-up dish, as in stand up and applaud: for the fideos with prawns, saffron and aïoli, which are little inch-long strands of vermicelli-like pasta, cooked in a serious prawn stock and served with some lean, lithe little prawns and a splodge of fantastic, light, not-too-garlicky aïoli – is a perfect thing. The very best way to eat pasta: not in a great big giant bowl of survival carbs that bore the hell out of you before you’ve even started, but just a couple of mouthfuls of firm, sticky, mouthfilling richness.

And then coffee and baklava and a very modest bill and loud goodbyes and out into the smoky cold of a London afternoon, south back to work in town for my pals, and north to the green reaches of Kentish Town for me, for a well-earned siesta.

Originality: 9 Variety: 9 Atmosphere: 9 Score: 9

Price: all of the dishes mentioned above were between £3.50 and £6.50 – the value for this quality of ingredient is unheard of.