Mercado

This handsome, subterranean restaurant has an admirable commitment to doing things in house, courtesy of founding chef (and still, current partner) Nathan Sasi. Like a market in Spain or Latin America, the menu changes regularly, though there are constants: the kitchen butchers its own meat, makes its own charcuterie and bakes its own bread using house-milled grains.

To start, you might eat cecina (a smoked cured beef) with wood-fired beetroot and garrotxa (a Catalonian goat’s cheese). The cured meats, and some of the cheeses, are part of a share-plate menu. Snacks could include tartlets of Oritz anchovies and roasted bull-horn peppers, and plates of jamon-style cured kingfish with crème fraiche and horseradish. The wood-fired oven pairs up with a rotisserie to provide the restaurant’s bigger platters. These involve whole spit-roasted lambs, and an epic Wagyu blade.

Sometime during your meal, you’ll probably have some cheese. When it comes, it’s not going to be delivered on a cutting board or a platter. Like the fanciest and most exciting yum cha services, it’s delivered to your table from a trolley. Look out for buffalo-milk ricotta, valencay (a French-style goat’s cheese with ash and white mould) and an orange-wine-washed taleggio.