The Chapel Market Kitchen in London N1 is pretty adjacent to the Angel Islington, famous as a light-blue stop on the Monopoly board. Chapel Market itself has a farmers’ market on Sundays and a very different kind of market every day of the week, where you might buy clothes, cassettes or goodness knows what. The restaurant (a view from outside is shown on the home page) makes a particularly big deal about its oysters, which aren’t my favourite thing, but then there is a menu offering a wide range of dishes which do not involve oysters. So my wife and I went along.

The anchovies with vanilla butter were wonderful, although we did not get through all the toast on offer…

We began by sharing three of their tapas dishes, all of which are pictured here and all of which were wonderful. I am usually keen on offal-type food but together we drew the line at veal brain on toast. Afterwards, we also agreed that the sobrasada was probably the best dish we ate.

…in part because the sobrasada (raw cured sausage), which came with pecorino cheese, was also served on bread

The restaurant is run by Maoz Alonim, a chef with an establishment at a market in Tel Aviv. Now he has a market one here. Even on a cold lunch-time in North London, the food carried an unmistakable Mediterranean flavour. If I have one regret it’s that I forgot to ask what ‘Things on toast’ involved. I may have to return to find out.

When it came to size of portion, we felt the tuna and potato salad was pushing it to be regarded as a tapas dish…more like a mini-meal in its own right

We still had our main courses to enjoy. My wife went for the clams, which were studded with iberico ham, while I opted for what you see below. To be honest, I had been tempted by the sound of the fresh yolk pasta with black truffles, and if I do indeed go back I will make sure I order that. But given how much I had eaten by this point, I was glad I had gone for squid rather than the Périgord-related Italian creation. It was definitely basta even without the pasta!

My plate of calamari, which was initially served a la plancha, with a generous side helping of sprouts adorned with comté cheese

I have seen that the CMK’s creme caramel has been widely praised, and the prospect of lemon curd crumble sounded almost irresistible, but we did in fact resist. We were full. In fact, I didn’t eat again that day.

Finally, the restaurant describes its wine list as “unruly”. However, I have to say the Bourgogne Aligoté I had was very well behaved.