Bar Douro
One of the newer additions to the already pretty foodie area of Borough is Flat Iron Square. It’s got a small food court and a few more permanent places under a series of railway arches. One of these places is Bar Douro, a new Portuguese restaurant. I was recently around London Bridge looking for a bite to eat so headed on down.
We started off with some milho frito or crispy polenta. It came with a red pepper sauce which was quite nice and sweet. The polenta itself was nicely fried, crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle. A really nice start to the meal!
Then it was onto the pataniscas de bacalhau or salt cod fritters. I do like a bit of salt cod and these fritters were good. They weren’t super crispy and were a little doughy but had some nice big chunks of salt cod in them which was good.
We thought we’d have a bit of veg as well so went with grilled chicory that came with almonds and an orange vinaigrette. I wasn’t overly impressed with this. The chicory was nice and all and the almonds were a really nice touch but as a dish, it wasn’t the most memorable.
Then it was onto the octopus with sweet potato mash. The octopus was super tasty; well cooked and fresh but I’m not sure it went that well with the sweet potato. It was actually a little too sweet and if you had too much of it with the octopus, it became almost a bit sickly. Eat the 2 separately though and they were both really good so that’s what we ended up doing.
The last savoury dish we had was the Bacalhau a bras. This was basically a salt cod hash. The shards of potato were crispy, the chunks of salt cod big and full of flavour. The portion size was pretty big but it was amazing; so tasty! Definitely something I’d recommend, especially if you like salt cod! Easily the highlight of the meal for me.
For dessert, we had a touchinho do ceu which is a rich egg yolk almond cake. This was dense, almost custard like in the middle; super rich and super delicious. It wasn’t too sweet which was nice and a really nice way to finish up, especially paired with a coffee!
I had a really nice meal here. There’s still a fair chunk of the menu that I didn’t get to try that I’d be more than willing to go back for but I think I’d still order that salt cod hash every time!
Bar Douro, Arch 35b, Flat Iron Square, Union Street, SE1 1TD
Cheers, JL
