AIL talks to Abel Lusa

Next week we release the All In One Ultimate Restaurant List, our guide to London’s top 100 restaurants. Having reached the top spot two years in a row, will the Ledbury have its position usurped? Will there be any surprise new entries like 2013’s Pitt Cue Co?

One restaurant that consistently appears on the list year after year is South Kensington’s Cambio de Tercio. We caught up with owner Abel Lusa who tells us about the evolution of Spanish cuisine, and which celebs have turned up for dinner lately.

What does Cambio de Tercio do that nowhere else does?
I don’t want to sound pretentious as there are many great Spanish places in London, but what I think we do slightly differently – not necessarily better or worse – is our wine list. We have a wine list like no other in London, with 500 labels, certainly no other Spanish restaurant in London has even half of the wines we have. We focus on the best and most expensive wines produced in Spain. Also most Spanish places in London are tapas bars or tapas restaurants, we are unique in that we are a restaurant. You could come to Cambio de Tercio for dinner and go for traditional tapas like croquettes, fried squid, Padron peppers, garlic prawns; we offer these as well because those are the dishes we started serving when we opened the restaurant 19 years ago and we didn’t want to kill our origins, but we also do modern Spanish food which is where we are different from others. We have a tasting menu and we have more innovative dishes, and we use the very latest techniques.

Which is your signature dish?
Oxtail caramelised in red wine with apple textures. Also a dish which is very popular is the 8 hours roasted Spanish tomatoes in sweet Oloroso sherry with basil caviar - that we make here - and goat’s cheese. Another very popular dish is a mojito which we serve in a caramel shell, in the same way a glass is produced, we blow the caramel to make shells that are hollow and have the mojito inside. It’s very visual and when it comes to the table diners have to crack it open with a spoon.

Have you had the same chef throughout the whole time you’ve been open?
Alberto Criado has been with us for 14 years. He studied catering and cooking, most famously he worked at two Michelin-starred Sergi Arola in Madrid.

How has your menu changed over time?
At the beginning we were purely a tapas bar offering traditional Spanish tapas. Since we opened our second place across the road, Tendido Cero, we started cooking more modern dishes and introducing main dishes and tasting menus. The more traditional things we left for the new tapas bar, and here, five years after opening we started becoming more modern and offering more of a gastronomic experience.

Do you think Londoners palates have changed so perhaps they wouldn’t have been ready for a modern Spanish restaurant when you first opened?
What we cook today is a reflection of what is cooked in Spain. 19 years ago, it’s not that London wasn’t ready, it’s that Spanish gastronomy was not as interesting as it is today, so we’ve always been kind of a reflection of the trends and however Spain has really been evolving. It has changed since El Bulli and El Celler de Can Roca, it wasn’t really like that 20 years ago.

What must a restaurant do to stay successful for as long as you have?
At the end of the day the food is only maybe 60% of the success, the rest is from having very professional but also very friendly staff. We treat everybody with Spanish charm, we smile at everyone. In a London restaurant if you get a famous chef from France or Italy or Spain, the menu they produce could be good but it doesn’t guarantee any success at all. If you think of the most famous restaurants in London, Zuma, Nobu, Hakkasan, Oblix, who are the chefs there? We don’t even know their names, but we go there for other reasons, we go because the food is good, but equally the atmosphere or the design, there’s something that attracts us back and back again. I’ve always said that friendly people, good food, ambience, good organisation, order is taken quickly, food comes quickly, staff smile at you, they say good bye, that brings more clients than a very famous chef.

In 2011 you opened Capote Y Toros, a tapas and sherry bar, and since then sherry bars have become fashionable. What do you think will be the next trend in Spanish food?
Spanish gastronomy back in Spain is much more than tapas. 19 out of 20 Spanish places that open not just in London but in the States as well are tapas bars. Back in Spain for example we have great steakhouses and grilled meat places, different to El Gaucho but the same kind of concept. We have incredible fish restaurants called marisquerias, none of those have opened outside of Spain, and we have incredible paella places, which is our national dish. We opened Tendido Cuatro six years ago in Parsons Green and I think we might be the only place in London dedicated to paella. There are also many restaurants dedicated to the roasting of baby lambs and suckling pigs in wooden ovens, what we call asadores. But nothing like that seems to open, because tapas have been established. It’s better to put the word tapas above the door than come with a new Spanish concept and explain what it’s about. So I don’t really feel the trend is going to change and suddenly we’re going to start seeing other kinds of Spanish restaurants outside of Spain, I think whatever will open from now on will be tapas.

Where else in London does good Spanish food?
Barrafina do it very well, Aqua, also the Iberica group and Jose Pizarro. And then all those places that opened 30 years ago, they might not be as sophisticated, but in the 60s there wasn’t even olive oil here so they have more merit than we have opening much later.

Cambio de Tercio is a favourite of tennis player Rafael Nadal, do many celebrities eat there?
We’re lucky to be in the part of London we’re in, and we’ve formed good relationships with many people. Pippa Middleton is a regular of ours, she published a column in the Telegraph a few months ago saying her favourite ham croquettes are made here. We also have Kate Middleton and Prince William, last Tuesday we had Dustin Hoffman, Kylie Minogue is a close friend of ours because she lives just a few metres from the restaurant, we have Robert de Niro, Liz Hurley, footballers, but mostly we’re known in the tennis circuits, so Wimbledon is a very busy time of year for us. Rafa has been coming here since he was 16, his first time at Wimbledon.


Keep your eyes peeled for the All In One Ultimate Restaurant List which will be distributed at tube stations from Tuesday 15th July