In search of the platonic gazpacho

We were eating tapas and talking about Spain. Leaving caviar on one side, when jamón ibérico is at its best, there is nothing better to eat. In the Hispania restaurant, it is always at its best. Nothing could match it, although Hispania’s cured leg of beef, the anchovies, the black pudding and the blood pudding all gave their uttermost. But there was one marginal disappointment.

Gazpacho is one of the world’s great dishes, and like several others — haggis is the obvious comparison — it began as a food for the poor, only using cheap and readily available ingredients. Early recipes call for only stale bread, water, olive oil — and garlic. Most modern gazpachos would include tomato, peppers and onion, but the garlic is essential. I thought that Hispania’s version did not have quite enough of a garlic punch.

They had an excuse. The restaurant is round the corner from the Bank of England and most of its customers are drawn from the respectable classes. Especially at lunchtime, such persons might be reluctant to consume a dish that would leave them with garlic breath strong enough to fell an ox.

Equally, I am not sure that I have ever had a gazpacho which lived up to the platonic ideal. There are a couple of other dishes, pork pie and dark chocolate mousse, which also fall short. I imagine a pie with a succulent crust, a topping of jelly and an efflorescence of pig. I have yet to find it. As for the mousse, that should be subtitled the heart of darkness, with an intense blackness which is also somehow sweet. Perhaps that is an impossible combination.

But in its implacability, garlicky gazpacho is expressive of one aspect of the Spanish character.