News just in... on Thursday 6th December, Sam and Sam will be cooking a festive supper at the Idler Academy on Westbourne Park Rd. Tickets are £45 including sherry & wine. To book, call the Idler Academy on 02072215908.

For more information, including the menu, please visit the Idler Academy website: http://idler.co.uk/news/christmas-supper-with-moro/#more-4479

For those of you who are wondering what on earth the Idler Academy is, read on...

The Idler Academy of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment is a bookshop, café and centre of learning in West London. Founded by Tom Hodgkinson and Victoria Hull, the intention is to bring back old school teaching subjects and styles. We combine the atmosphere of cultivated leisure that distinguished Plato’s Academy with the lively conviviality of the 18th century coffeehouse, and add a good dose of the 1950s grammar school.

It’s intriguing to note that in Ancient Greece, the word for ‘leisure’, scholee, later turned into our word for ‘school’. Education was a privilege of the free élite, hence the term, “liberal education”. Education distinguished the free man from the slave. State education today, though, is really a matter of fitting us out for servility rather than liberty. The Idler’s idea of education is different: we want to liberate by giving people skills both academic and practical. We want to teach English grammar, Latin, calligraphy, gardening and embroidery, so we can concentrate more of our time on beauty and truth rather than simply toiling for wages. We want to rediscover the pleasures both of creativity and the intellect, and help people to become self-reliant, capable and competent. That way lies liberty. Hence our motto, libertas per cultum, meaning “freedom through education”. And that word cultum means “education” not in the sense of instilling propaganda, but in the sense of “cultivation” or “culture”.

It's time to bow to the inevitable folks - Christmas will soon be upon us...

Our Christmas menu will be available from November 26 & is £35 per person including an aperitif, pudding & coffee; it has been designed for large bookings but can also work for smaller numbers.

If you're planning a party or office do, for groups of 20-35 people we can offer exclusive access to Morito on any day from 3:00pm to 5:00pm depending on availability. This does involve eating lunch at a slightly later than usual time but the pay off is that you will have Morito all to yourselves and can even choose your own music!

Email hugo@morito.co.uk for Christmas bookings.

Christmas Menu:

aperitif: cava pomegranate or rebujito

bread & harissa

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choose any 6 of the following dishes:

chestnut & chorizo soup

spced lamb, aubergine, yoghurt, pine nuts & pomegranate

chicharrones de cadiz – pork belly with cumin & lemon

puntillitas – baby squid & sumac

palamos prawns a la plancha with alioli

chicory, picos de europa cheese & walnuts

spinach, pine nuts, raisins & anchovy

chickpeas, pumpkin, tahini & coriander

padrón peppers

patatas bravas

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malaga raisin ice cream & pedro ximenez

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cafe solo or cortado

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£35.00 per person

It is a well established cliche that actors - when resting - are often to be found working in restaurants, so it may come as no surprise to learn that several Morito staff, both past & present, have dabbled in the dramatic arts. Indeed, your correspondent falls in to this category. Thus was born the idea for La Turista: Cafe Duende, a collaboration between Morito & wandering arts company Hobo...

You are a traveller to another time, another place…

A chorus of some of the great artistic voices of the twentieth century lead the traveller on a journey through the clamour, fury & delirious brightness of Spain in the civil war years, when life was very hard and very precious…

Featuring the works of Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Joan Miro, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro & more as well as a three course meal & wine.

The initial response has been very encouraging - a two night run sold out within a day of tickets going on sale. If all goes well, La Turista will return in the new year. Watch this space...

Tuesday 11 – Sunday 16 September, 2012

We are really excited about our first Seafood Festival at Morito in September, an opportunity for us (and you, we hope) to indulge in our twin passions: the fruits of the sea and the barrel.

From the day Morito opened, fish and seafood have been integral to the menu and the source of some of the restaurant’s most enduringly popular tapas  – think home cured anchovies, baby squid with sumac, scallops with albariño butter sauce or a beautifully fresh piece of sea bass fillet, simply grilled and served with lemon.  The Morito team is also evangelical in their enthusiasm for sherry as the perfect accompaniment to these dishes; combine the two and the result is the first ever Morito Seafood Festival.

During the Festival week a tasting selection will be on offer from a specially created menu, to be confirmed, but which might include:

Pescaito frito

An Andalucian classic of mixed fried fish

Navajas

Grilled razor clams with chopped salad and chorizo

Vieiras

Scallops with Albariño from Galicia

Gambas a la plancha

Red prawns with mojo verde from Las Canarias

Tortillitas de camarones

Prawn fritters from San Lucar de Barrameda, the home of Manzanilla sherry

Arroz de marisco

Seafood rice with alioli from Valencia

Fideos

Pasta with clams, from Catalunya

Croquetas de bacalao

 Salt cod croquetas, from Barcelona

Montadito de anchoa

Toast with tomato, anchovy and grilled green chilli

Montadito de cangrejo

Toast with crab and oloroso sherry from Jerez

Gilda

Pincho of anchovy, olive and guindilla chilli

Boquerones

 Home cured anchovies

Sardinas

Moroccan stuffed sardines with coriander and cumin

Percebes

Goose barnacles

Erizo de Mar

Sea Urchins

Orteguillas

Sea anenomes

The Seafood Festival launch event last night was a great success. A packed house at Morito were treated to some enlightening words on sherry delivered by expert Andrew Sinclair from Gonzalez Byass before settling down to some stunning food with wines to match. We tasted the following:

Fino: Tio Pepe / Tio Pepe En Rama

With: Rock oysters / Prawn tortillitas

Manzanilla: La Gitana & Pastrana Pasada

With: Razor clams with salpicon & chorizo / Monkfish liver with girolles, garlic & parsley

Oloroso: Alfonso

With: Crab with chilli & oloroso / Scallop with oloroso

Pedro Ximenez: Triana

With: Walnut Cake

The lovely people from Sainsbury's Magazine have posted a nice blog about our inaugural seafood and sherry festival, including a nice little promo movie featuring our very own Samuel Clark and some great shots of the Morito chefs in action. Follow the link to watch the clip and read the blog...

Read here

Now that we have got our seafood festival underway we thought it might be an idea to explain exactly how it's going to work . . .

First things first, it's business as usual at Morito for the rest of the week, so bookings at lunch time only (12pm-4pm) with dinner (5pm-11pm) strictly first come, first served. However, for the duration of the festival - and we're already thinking about extending it to next week - we will be running a seafood only menu alongside our regular menu which includes a great tasting offer - 5 dishes with sherries to match at £35 per head.

Today's offering is as follows:

La Gitana Manzanilla with sea bass seviche or salt cod croquetas,

Pastrana Pasada Manzanilla with Palamos prawns or mackerel with fennel & capers,

Tio Pepe Fino with baby squid or octopus with potato & paprika,

Tio Pepe En Rama with cuttlefish roe, red pepper & preserved lemon or Moroccan stuffed sardines with cumin & coriander,

Alfonso Oloroso with crab montadito or scallop with oloroso & butter sauce

A good proportion of our customers at lunch today took advantage of this offer and all left extremely happy if a little tipsy. Does the world ever seem a better place or an evening more brimming with potential than when you wobble out in to the afternoon sunshine after a fine lunch of seafood & sherry?

Following the success of last week's seafood & sherry festival we have decided to extend for one more week. So, for those of you that are still wondering what the hell this is all about, a brief re-cap. First things first, it's business as usual at Morito in the sense that we're taking bookings for lunch, but not for dinner. However, in addition to our regular tapas menu we are also running a separate seafood specials menu. All the dishes are available priced individually, but if you want the true festival experience, why not take advantage of our set menu option; five courses with five half glasses of sherry for £35.

Here's a list of some of the dishes we ran last week:

Rock oysters; sea bass seviche; salt cod croquetas; prawn tortillitas; razor clams with chorizo & salpicon; octopus with potato & paprika; mackerel with fennel & capers; red mullet with olive, anchovy & rosemary sauce; cuttlefish roe with grilled red pepper & preserved lemon; baby squid with sumac; monkfish liver with girolles; scallops with oloroso butter sauce, crab montadito with oloroso & chilli...

To book a table for lunch, please call us on 02072787007.

Summer seems well & truly over and, to be honest, it's a relief. Don't get me wrong, I love the sunshine, but a capricious, unpredictable & wet summer, such as we've just endured, is not something to be mourned. So let's celebrate autumn and try to do so without using the phrase m****w f**********s. I wore a scarf this morning and very nearly dug out my wool coat. Jumpers, jackets, cardigans, boots and gloves. Layering. Maybe even a hat. All to be welcomed, along with lots of new dishes... We're gonna roll with the season, gradually at first, but keep an eye over the next few weeks and by the time we're kicking piles of leaves along the pavement and smelling bonfires the menu should have a whole new look. New on today we have grilled rabbit with almond alioli and a warm salad of aubergine with pomegranate seeds, toasted walnuts, cinnamon yoghurt & mint. We also welcome back a couple of old favourites, Butifarra & Morcilla, both sporting new autumn looks; the former will be on toast with girolle mushrooms, garlic & parsley, and the latter with watercress and apples caramelised in butter. It must also now only be a matter of time before the beloved chickpeas divest themselves of chopped salad and wrap up in pumpkin, red onion & tahini sauce... watch this space...

Everyone must dream at some point of headlining a festival: belting out a virtuoso guitar/ drum/ vocal solo to a mass of ecstatic fans. It’s a dream that must necessarily be abandoned upon becoming a chef - waving a spatula at the audience just wouldn’t feel the same. Yet, when the Wilderness team approached Moro late in 2010, that’s exactly how they sold it to us. The chance to cook our dream menu as ‘culinary headliners’ of the inaugural festival’s Saturday line up. It was hard to say no. Being at Wilderness was undoubtedly one of our highlights of 2011 and when we were invited back for 2012, we leapt at the chance... follow link to read more:

Read here

When Philip from Albion Wine, one of our favourite suppliers, slipped in a bottle of this Vermouth with one of our deliveries, we were immediately taken with the beautiful label and intrigued to learn that it was made in Rioja. When we tried it and saw how at home it looked on our bar, we were smitten.

Now we're mixing it with cava to make Vermut Espumoso or dry sherry and orange bitters for Fino Lacuesta. A perfect first drink of the day and very good if you're feeling fragile...

When Morito was invited to participate in the Real Wine Fair we jumped at the chance - hundreds of wine makers from all over the world, with a shared philosophy of minimum vineyard intervention, gathered at Victoria House in Bloomsbury for three days of tasting and talking. With the help of Dillwyn Smith - artist and miracle maker, design guru for the Morito interior - we created a mobile Morito. Needless to say, with our trademark uncomfortable but good looking wooden stools and some very tasty grub, the event was a big hit with growers and schmoozers alike. 

You can expect mobile Morito to pop-up again soon...watch this space...