Delaterra, N1

An old favourite, rediscovered

If you visit Delaterra, a compact Spanish restaurant and café on Islington’s Essex Road, you’re going to meet Ovidi.

Ovidi is Delaterra, Delaterra is Ovidi. The soft-spoken Spaniard is the chef, owner, waiter, barista, baker, and presumably dishwasher too. Sometimes he has help -- you’ll often see his girlfriend behind the counter, helping with service or simply making sure that Ovidi hasn’t missed the arrival of a customer -- but just as often this is a one-man band.

How he manages to run the place by himself I’m not sure I’ll ever know, but you will have to make the odd concession for it. Sometimes service is a little slow, especially if it’s busy. He might get distracted and forget that you’re waiting for the bill, or be too busy in the kitchen to come and check the front-of-house. If he goes to the toilet, you’re just going to have to wait.

Hectic as this all might sound, Ovidi is the opposite -- as is Delaterra. He’s calm, quiet, never frantic. He’ll take his time and let you take yours. He’s verging on sedate.

But his eyes light up when he talks about food.

The best way to order at Delaterra is to ask Ovidi what’s good. He might point you towards a firm favourite, like his deeply savoury lamb stew, served with silky mash and a slice of homemade sourdough toast licked with green olive oil and enough raw garlic to make your eyes water. But he’s just as likely to casually mention something that wasn’t on the menu at all, some dish he’s been thinking about adding, or an off-menu creation he’s been tinkering with in his downtime. I’ve taken just about every recommendation Ovidi has made, and not regretted the choice once.

My favourite time to visit Delaterra is for lunch. I’m lucky, I suppose, in that it’s a five-minute walk, close enough to be there and back inside my lunch hour, but I really think it’s worth travelling from further afield too. Sometimes I’m the only person there, at most there are one or two others. There’s peace to be found sitting in the silence at the low counter that faces out onto the road, stew steaming out of its clay pot, fogging up the glass for a brief moment before it cools enough to eat.

That lamb is absolutely the order at lunch, but there’s an excellent brothy seafood rice if you’re after something lighter. A vegan butter bean stew feels plain at first blush, but by the end of the bowl I realise that’s the wrong word. It’s not plain, it’s simple, and in its simplicity slowly becomes as compulsive as anything else I’ve ordered here. The house wines are both excellent for the money too, making a glass or two an eternal temptation.

There’s a separate brunch menu I’ve not tried -- mostly variations on baked or scrambled eggs, though turkey with truffle and mushroom sauce might be the dark horse -- and then tapas at dinnertime. These are more substantial than you might think of when you hear the word, with one or two dishes per person probably the right order, so it’s more about the excuse to share. Charcuterie and cheese boards are joined by more stews, marinated seafood, and delicate bites like ham croquettes or small rounds of a light black pudding, each resting on a dollop of a sweet paprika-infused tomato sauce and topped by its own perfectly crisped fried quail’s egg.

Alongside the counter seating, a single large wooden table dominates the café. It’s great for group dinners, and if you ask nicely Ovidi will let you rent out the whole place and set a custom menu for the night -- a menu which, if you’re lucky, he’ll be unable to resist adding extras to anyway.

It’s essential that you don’t skip dessert. For this there won’t even be a menu, so you’ll just have to ask Ovidi what he baked that day. If he says “natillas custard and chocolate mousse,” then don’t hesitate. This is a dessert that gives trifle a good name, rich and sweet and unrepentantly decadent, without a hint of the ‘70s to it.

It was actually Ovidi’s desserts that drew me to Delaterra in the first place. Long before I ever ate here for lunch or dinner, back when I had a regular commute to a real-life office, Delaterra was my morning coffee spot. Not every day, mind, but when I felt like the treat of a coffee I hadn’t made myself, it was to Ovidi I turned. Once a week or so I’d stop in for the same order -- black americano, no sugar -- only for him to press into my hands a little slice of whatever he’d baked that morning. “It’s vegan!” he’d exclaim every now and then, glowing with a heady mix of pride and amazement that he’d found a way to make cake taste like that without the aid of butter or eggs. I always meant to come back more often, to visit at the weekends. I never did.

Covid took my commute, and it took that routine. Delaterra doesn’t even open before noon on weekdays any more, so I guess Ovidi’s routines have changed too. I’m a little embarrassed to say that it took me until October to re-discover Delaterra, years after I stopped walking into work. Now that I have, I think I’ll make the effort to find a new way for it to fit into my life, another routine that gives this quiet little café, and its even quieter owner, the space that it deserves.