Los Moros, York

Clever cooking, without being annoying about it

You’ve got to respect any restaurant willing to go to the effort of making its own sausages. It’s a faff, but one that shows a commitment to doing things right, beginning to end. At Los Moros in York, those sausages are homemade merguez, thick and spiced, but shaped into a perfect spiral. Each sausage arrives on a bed of minty cacik, sprinkled with cumin salt and decorated with a slender pickled guindilla, sharp and acidic enough to cut through the rich red fat. It’s a wondrous thing, perhaps the best merguez I’ve had the chance to eat, and an unmissable order if you’re here.

Los Moros, which started life as a street food stall before expanding to offer a restaurant as well, doesn’t only make merguez. Falafel, houmous, pickles, and preserved lemons all come from the restaurant kitchen; they’ve even partnered with local brewery Brew York to produce two branded beers. There’s clearly a concerted effort to make things their own way.

Part of that is a clear effort to bring a northern sensibility to the north African food — it’s no accident that the merguez have been shaped to a perfect Cumberland coil. It’s there in the beef cheek tanjia, a Moroccan stew that appears instead in the form of a single, quivering lump of cheek, ready to fall apart at the merest suggestion of a fork. It’s served with preserved lemons and pickled onions, but also a great heaving pile of mash; yin and yang. Or perhaps the chicken tagine, which in reality is no such thing. Instead a single breast is cooked with pin-point precision, dressed with plump olives and more of those impressive home-preserved lemons, accompanied by a second full plate of soft, saffron-laced potatoes. African flavours, European presentation.

I won’t belabour the point about Los Moros’ efforts to bring north Africa and north England together, not least because it turns out Jay Rayner thought the exact same thing when he visited Los Moros a few years back. But it’s essential to understanding that this isn’t a kitchen beholden to tradition.

“Modern” cooking has a tendency to mean “fussy,” but nothing of the sort is true here. For one thing, Los Moros has preserved the unassuming air of a casual, local spot, with relaxed dining rooms spread across two floors, and a garden that I’m sure would have been lovely to lounge in if it hadn’t been a frigid mid-January evening. The wine list is short and friendly — unless you fancy champagne, you can’t spend more than £45 on a bottle. A couple glasses of a light, fruity picpoul prove a welcome follow-up to the crisp Brew York pale ale.

Some of the kitchen’s best cooking is also its simplest. That merguez, for example, is mostly unadorned, but the smoky, tender sausage crumbles beautifully after the short, sharp snap of its skin. A side of tenderstem broccoli is an unexpected highlight, cooked to keep its bite even amidst the bright, peppery muhammara sauce, helped by the occasional crack of crisp-roasted almond. I was almost as fond of the cauliflower starter, a half-head cooked to a crunch, smothered in deep green tahini and decorated by sesame, pomegranate seeds, and a drizzle of molasses. The unctuous tahini is crying out for just a little acid to cut through it — a splash of lemon juice would almost certainly do the trick — but we mop every drop up regardless.

There’s a trio of desserts on offer; the kitchen having earned our confidence, we opt for what seems the most inventive: peach melba cigars. A pair of slender cylinders arrive, a crunching shatter revealing fruity innards and the same welcome flavour of frying that underlies the best crepes. Poached peaches, peach jam, and vanilla muhalabia — a sort of milk pudding — complete the artfully speckled plate, the night’s only real gesture towards fastidious plating. Fortunately, this is the sort of dessert that begs to be smushed together as you go, crisp cigars and soft poached fruit forming a messy melange in the mouth.

I wish I knew more restaurants like Los Moros; perhaps they’re all to be found outside the confines of the M25. Clever, creative cooking walks a deft line between tradition and experimentation, interesting but never entirely outlandish. And it does it all in the confines of a space you can truly relax in; London’s equivalent would probably have achingly cool decor and achingly uncomfortable chairs, and a wine list that never let you forget everything was “natty.” I jest a little; I love those places too. But I’m reassured to know that there’s another way, a restaurant that feels comfortingly banal, though tastes anything but.