This week I ate out with a reader again. Again? you cry. Is there no end to his willingness to consort with the ravenous riff-raff? Three readers indulged already this year, and 2006 barely out of short trousers. This must be some sort of record.

And indeed, it may well be. First there was Anna Fewster at Bill’s in Brighton, then it was Helen Oon at Awana in Chelsea, and now I’m off to meet Penny Moore at Tapas Brindisa in Borough Market.

Penny, who e-mailed suggesting lunch at Tapas Brindisa, which I had been meaning to do for a while, is chief executive of a group called Hospitality Action, which offers a life-support system, she tells me, “for all who work, or have worked, within hospitality in the United Kingdom”. It is a charity, in other words, which provides the basic needs to ex-chefs who have fallen on hard times. It helps them with addiction problems (which are rife in the industry), provides financial support, helps deal with issues of isolation for retirees, sends birthday cards, does what it can. From the bumf I skimmed through, I can see that Gary Rhodes, Anton Mossiman, Heston Blumenthal, Antony Worrall Thompson and others are heavily involved, and I’m not surprised. One dodgy plateful in front of the wrong critic and any of them could be clinging on to life by a thread.

Personally, I am devastated to learn of the existence of such an organisation. It means that however hard I hammer a restaurant, however much I abuse a chef, it is unlikely, thanks to Hospitality Action, that they will actually die shivering in the gutter. I mean, what’s the blooming point? At the very least, I would beg you not to go to the website at www.hospitalityaction.org.uk, either to offer money or to register even the faintest interest. If we ignore them, they may just go away.

I agreed to take Penny for lunch largely in the hope of persuading her to disband her sorry crew and join me on the dark side. So much more fun slaughtering chefs than saving them. Call me Darth Coren. Feel the force. It’s tickly.

Tapas Brindisa is yet another restaurant to have opened on the fringe of Borough Market (cf Glas, Roast, etc), which is rapidly becoming a sort of city within a city – growing up, as cities do, where there is a regular and reliable flow of that which is needed to sustain life. In this case, not water, but bourgeois foodies with time on their hands. What is on offer here is the very highest quality of imported Spanish raw materials, barely fussed with, and charged at lino-chomping prices (normally I chomp carpet, but there wasn’t any here). At their stall in the market (Brindisa has long been our premier importer of quality Spanish produce), I have frequently bought 100g of Joselito gran reserva ham for £15, so it was a pleasure to pay the same here in the restaurant and get about 40g, with a plate thrown in for nothing. Seeing as they charge a whole leg (at the stall) at £65 per kilo that means the cost of simply carving it is reckoned to be… hang on… divide by ten… carry two… well, a lot.

Still, it is nicely carved. You do not want to use a slicing machine on this stuff, that’s for pale sheets of cool parma ham. This stuff likes to be carved in little rectangular shanks and served quite warm so that the tangy fat really makes a nuisance of itself in your mouth, then you chomp little dog-biscuit things (they didn’t offer them here) to get it off the roof of your mouth, and slosh it all down with cool manzanilla, of which I ordered a glass, and then a bottle, seeing as I had an expert here to help me with my booze problem should things get out of hand. La Gitana is the house brand, a solid, yeoman choice. If the Spanish have yeomen. I doubt it. You wouldn’t catch a yeoman kipping under a tree for a couple of hours after lunch.

There were good almonds and olives, exemplary pimientos de padron (small peppers fried in salt of which about one in ten is supposed to be fiery), and a plate of very good pork products from acorn-fed Ibericos, which are the black, aardvarky-looking pigs you see all over Spain, and also here, in photos on the walls.

I only really eat this stuff in Spain, so I was a bit confused by so Anglophonic a menu. Translating backwards to remind myself what to expect, I ate sautéd artichokes with black truffles which were golden and earthy, and goat’s cheese with honey – which English palates may prefer to finish off with than add to the main event – and rather squishy black pudding with apples, grilled chorizo which was less robust than I had hoped for, and big chunks of squid with aîoli on toast which was a rustic, hearty, fisherman’s jumper of a snack.

According to a couple of readers, John and Penny Phillips, who spotted me and came over to say hello, the salt cod is too salty, but the something else (I just can’t read what I wrote) is fantastic. So do try and have that if you go. Wait, I think it begins with a “c”. And that’s an “r”… “c”, “r’, “o”… croquetas. It’s the croquetas that John and Penny Phillips liked. Well, thank God I sorted that one out.

Tapas Brindisa is a loud, bustling sort of a place, as tapas bars tend to be, but it is a very good one, and if you treat it as a tapas bar and order just a couple of things to go with a drink, then you won’t have to sell your watch to pay the bill. And if it does break the bank, and you can’t afford the fare home, and you work or have worked in the hospitality industry, then give Hospitality Action a call and I dare say they’ll send a cab…

Now, reserve your copy of next Saturday’s Times right this instant, because next week I shall attempt to break my own world record, inching the bar up to four readers in the manner of Sergei Bubka (please say you remember Sergei Bubka, the great Polish pole vaulter), by entertaining (well, eating with) one Mark Taylor in Bath. Not, as far as I know, the Mark Taylor who once captained the Australian cricket team, but almost certainly the one who is restaurant critic of the Bristol Evening Post. He read about my disappointing experiments with Mutton in Wiltshire and has written to promise that if I try the mutton at… But, wait, I’m wasting next week’s intro. I’ll have nothing to say. You’ll just have to hold your breath for a week, knowing that the bar has been raised to four, yes, four readers in the same quarter.

Coren has the pole in his hands, he’s beginning his familiar trot down the runway, the crowd are beginning to clap in rhythm, he hits a canter…

Tapas Brindisa
18-20 Southwark Street, SE1 (020-7357 8880)
Meat/Fish: 7
Cooking: 6
Concept: 8
Score: 7
Price: A hearty scoff for two with a 50cl bottle of manzanilla will get close to £100, but you could get out for £25 a head if you’re careful.

Savoro
Nesbitt House Hotel, 206 High Street, Barnet (020-8449 9888)

Brian Jackson writes: “This place used to be a run-of-the-mill Italian restaurant, but it has now been completely rejigged and has an excellent French chef. I am a cheese man, and the cheese was excellent. I always think that this is the sign of a serious restaurant. My wife says that the ice-cream selection for dessert was the best she had had recently.”

Café Maitreya
89 St Mark’s Road, Bristol (0117 9510100)

Eleanor Williams writes: “I had pistachio and chestnut croute served with caramelised endive, papardelle and a pastis beurre blanc. I could eat it every day. This is an organic, vegetarian restaurant which would normally draw horrified gasps from my husband, but even he was won over. Bloody lovely. Hemp beer, too.”

E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere good, but it may be a while now before I eat out with a reader again

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