I’ve been a bit quiet of late on the blog front. It’s partly because my recent Sevilla dining jaunts have failed to set my world on fire. Thank heavens then for the latest culinary opening in town – Salvaje on Calle Resolana, just a hop and a skip away from the Alameda.
Salvaje – meaning wild in Spanish – is housed in what once was an iron foundry, and at first glance looks a bit like a co-working space with tiered stacks of indoor plants creating partitions between wooden tables.
Covering 700m squared, the team behind the venture, the Cabrera brothers, have chosen a massively ambitious space to launch their next gastronomic venture after the petit and bijoux, Sal Gorda in the Alfalfa.
Salvaje is so big it is in fact divided into 3 areas. On entering, a long bar plays host to the abaceria. Normally an abaceria is a fairly basic affair with most of the offerings coming in slices (cheese and cured meats) or out of tins. At Salvaje, the term abaceria gets a serious facelift because accompanying the usual fare are very tasty and reasonably priced fusion tapas dishes such as marinated salmon ensaladilla and boletus mushroom risotto.
The bar area then opens out into a light and spacious restaurant with its own menu. I was imagining prior to entering, that the dishes here would be wildly expensive. But quite the contrary, from a first glance they were the perfect combination of quality ingredients, inventive designs, and prices that won’t overly sting your wallet.
The Mackerel – my standout dish
There is quite a lot of fish and sea food on the menu, which for me personally I loved. In particular the raw mackerel in a Korean kimchee, grapes and citrusy marinade. But everything was frankly delicious from the delicately moist hake, the fragrantly fresh ceviche, to the dainty clams in a sauce of which I practically licked the plate clean. Dessert was limited to two choices. We went for the chocolate biscuity base option with a mint cloud on top, which was an explosion of flavours, but not ideal for committed vegetarians as it contained gelatine.
Dessert
The third area will eventually be a grill and barbeque, but has yet to open.
It can go two ways when a restaurant first launches. Either it is utter chaos, or the staff pull out all the stops to make sure it’s a dining experience to remember (for the right reasons). In our case, it was the latter. All the waiters were suitably attentive and well briefed on what they were bringing out, and the chef, Elias Cabrera even ventured his way out of the kitchen to speak to diners and hear their feedback.
So all in all, my first impressions of Salvaje did not disappoint. Which I am delighted by, because it means I’ve finally got something half decent to write about again.
Salvaje – Calle Resolana 40, Sevilla
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