FOOD & DRINK

Where can you find the best Spanish food in London? Few foodies would have trouble answering that: it's Moro, the restaurant opened back in 1997 by a young couple, Samuel and Samantha Clark.

Moro has done for Spanish and North African food (hence the Moorish name), what the River Cafe has done for Italian food — delivering it as authentically as possible, using the best ingredients and introducing new tastes to British palates.

That's hardly surprising, for it was while working at the River Cafe that the Clarks met. Newly married, and before opening their own restaurant, they set off in a camper van, through Spain and Morocco to the Sahara, to learn 'as many flavours and techniques as possible and to try to discover the details that really make food taste of where it comes from and not seem cooked by an Anglo-Saxon'.

At Moro, they cook in a wood oven, make their own bread and yoghurt, and cut no corners in pursuit of the exotic, spicy and scented flavours they love. Their food has both romance and integrity and the restaurant is always packed out with appreciative regulars. They've passed on a lot of their knowledge in three revelatory cookbooks, too, this Muslim Mediterranean cuisine being so much less familiar to most of us than that of Italy. Yet, despite their success, such has been the Clarks' commitment to running this one place as well as possible, they hadn't expanded — until the delicatessen next door moved out. Last summer, they opened a baby Moro there: Morito, a tapas bar with a no-booking policy where you can sample great flavours for a modest price. In no time at all, it was mobbed.

And yet, just as it is slightly peculiar that it's the non-Italian River Cafe that can claim to serve the best Italian food in London, isn't it a bit rum that food of such authenticity should be brought to us not by cooks from the south of Spain but by an English couple who have genned up on it? Answering that question was one reason why I jumped at the opportunity to join Sam Clark on a cookery break in Andalucia. It's organised by Tasting Places, a company that runs intelligent, luxurious food holidays, mainly in Italy but also in France, Spain, Greece and Thailand, and offers classes with big-name chefs, including Alastair Little, Richard Corrigan, Skye Gyngell and Angela Hartnett in London.

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