Jose's Tapas — Tom's review

Tomato bread.

Now, I'll forgive you if the above pair of common nouns doesn't instantly set your pulse racing. That's okay.

But I won't forgive you — with a steadfastness that'd make even Lucifer wince — if you go into Jose's tapas bar on Bermondsey Street, order their tomato bread, shove a chunk into your gob and don't immediately prostrate yourself at the twin altars of the Tomato and the Bread.

Jose's tomato bread is a mouth-cram of joy. It's like getting an intravenous shot of Mediterranean sunlight. It is a marriage of ur-tomato and ur-bread, beside which all other things bready and tomatoey are but anaemic pretenders.

Listen, I've kind of jumped into the middle, here, I know. (But I suspect you're familiar with this narrative technique and see it for the shameless attention-grabbing word-whoredom that it is.) But since we're here, in the middle, let's flail around a bit longer before attempting any kind of context or overview, shall we? Let's talk about the fresh green crunch of the deep-fried pedron peppers, the seared, matt delights of a flash-fried chicken liver. Let's talk about the garlicked juices of some pretty damn chunky prawns, running down your fingers.

(The juices running down your fingers, that is, not — thank the living saviour — the prawns themselves.)

What you need to know, in essence, is this: Go to Jose's. Get the tomato bread. Get sherry. Get a bunch more tapas. Probably just ask them to bring you a selection rather than trying to choose, you indecisive ditherer. Get more sherry. Get more tapas. Repeat until barely conscious/mobile.

Oh, and the other thing you need to know is — it's busy. By which I mean, rammed. Like a nightclub. But a million times more delicious than any nightclub I've ever been in. You can't book, you just turn up and try and find somewhere to squish yourself. Which took us about an hour.

But that hour was absolutely worth it.

For the tomato bread alone.