Lunch at Pintxo People, Brighton

23-Oct-08 - I'd heard about it, been recommended to it, and read about it but I didn't actually go there until Thursday, and I was impressed. To fill in the background, ever since I was so brutally stabbed (all right, all right, we know about that. Get on with it! Ed.) well, ever since I left the BBC, about every three or four months I've met up with my old boss, Mike Hapgood, who is now HRLP at Southampton (BBC South) for lunch (see 03-May-08 post for the last one - hmm... Must be five months, then). He happened to be in Brighton on other business so we decided to meet at Pintxo People on Western Road (where Loch Fyne used to be). I liked the look of the place right off - plain wooden tables and floors, newspapers, very informal, very friendly staff, very cold Fino, although a little disappointing that they hadn't got the 20cl bottles of Tío Pepe or El Rocío Manzanilla, both of which were on the list. Indeed, they told me that González Byass had discontinued both (I've written to Martin Skelton to check - he has just replied. It's true. They don't have a bottling line in Sanlúcar and new regulations insist that Manzanilla is bottled there, and the 20cl bottle didn't take off in sufficient quantity, leading to freshness problems). They did, however, have the Fino Romate from Sánchez Romate, which was excellent and served in 10cl measures (a quadruple spirit measure) at £3.50. I'm going to have a beef about that in a minute or two, but not yet. They did throw in a ración of boquerones as an apology.

These lunches are a very relaxed affair, and we talk about the glory days of Southern Counties radio when he was running it and I was on it, but also about everything else, including the food, of course, and he's a big fan of YES CHEF! Magazine - I gave him a copy of the current issue. Big changes are afoot in BBC local radio, with all 41 stations moving from under the aegis of 'BBC Nations and Regions' and into bed with 'BBC News'. What this will mean, nobody seems to know... Or nobody's telling. It would seem to be an opportunity for a good shake-up, however.

Anyway, it was a very convivial lunch and we had five plates of tapas (or pintxos in Basque) although I didn't understand why the place has a Basque name and the menu is mostly in Spanish with a few items in Catalan. No matter, however, the tapas were the best I've eaten outside Spain - indeed, a good deal better than many tapas I've had inside Spain: pan con tomate was truly melt-in-the-mouth delicious, the tortilla de patatas was suitably moist and laced with a touch of ali-oli, gambas al ajillo (possibly my favourite Spanish seafood dish) was exactly right, even the berenjenas (aubergines are not my favourite vegetable) were good, and the patatas bravas came with a separate pot of salsa dip rather than being liberally scattered with it as in most UK tapas bars - lovely stab-it-with-a-stick food.

All in all it was an excellent meal, and just enough for a light lunch. I shall certainly go there again. But now for my beef, and it concerns mark-ups on wine. Every restaurant has its own mark-up policy, usually starting at about 100%, and the higher you go through the stars and rosettes the bigger it gets. You can complain, or you can do what everybody does and go somewhere else. However, my complaint is not about mark-ups per se, but about the fact that Sherry is always marked up higher than any other wine. For example, the Romate Fino at £3.50 for 10cl grosses up to £26.25 a bottle. The wine sells at £5.99 retail, so we may assume that a restaurant gets it for rather less, so let's say £5 for round figures. This represents a mark-up of 525% . Meanwhile Rioja Muga Blanco (to take an example from the list) sells at retail for £8.95, so let's say that the restaurant gets it for £7.50. It sells by the 17.5cl glass for £6, which grosses up to £25.71 a bottle, a mark up of 343%. So why should Sherry be marked up at half as much again? Answers on a postcard?

Mind you, this pales to insignificance compared with an experience I had at a London hotel some years ago. I was with a colleague and she had a glass of the house white (an Australian Chardonnay) which was about £3. I had a Fino and asked for a proper glassful, the same size as my colleague's. It cost £10.50. I knew the approximate price of the wines, which was the same for both, and I calculated that the hotel had a mark-up of 700% on the Sherry but 'only' 300% on the wine. I asked the bar manager how he could justify it and he looked at me rather snottily and said "because everybody else does. It should be 1,000% really". Needless to say I have never set foot in that hotel since. I don't suppose they sell much Sherry, either.

For the record - I love to drink Sherry with food, and not just Spanish food, but a well-chilled Manzanilla with spicy oriental and south American chillis is absolutely perfect. And I'd like to buy it by the bottle, and I'm prepared to pay the same on-the-table price as an equivalent bottle of dry white wine on the same restaurant's list. So if your Oz Chardonnay cost £6 and it's on the list at £18, that's what I'll pay for a bottle of Fino. OK? Fat chance!