Basics
Location
Per Person
€7.50 for coffee and a sizeable breakfast.
In not so many words
Hopes? An upmarket Spanish second breakfast.
Reality? Something different.
First Impressions? An unnecessarily large table, a bright yet intimate space, and a giant, striking black and white photo of the owner on the wall.
A USP? The novelty of Iranian-inspired dishes in a very Spanish barrio, not forgetting The Best Chocolate Brownies around.
The food in three words? Ottolenghi in Salamanca.
Can they get the staff? Yes, the waitresses are polite, and attentive when not overly busy.
Service with a smile? Yes, friendly enough.
Would you take your friends? I'd take them for the brownies alone - I'm not sure I'd trust myself to deliver them.
Rating for a dating? Perhaps for a comfortable breakfast some weeks in but it's more somewhere I'd take my mum.
Tip? Why not.
If you could change one thing, what would it be? Coffee included with the weekend breakfast.
Going back? Yes, I'll be going back for the nargessi at some point.
In Pictures
Banibanoo on Google Images
In not so few words
In desperate need of caffeine and sustenance last Saturday morning, I popped into Banibanoo in search of a substantial breakfast.
The waitress's initial look of confusion led me to believe I'd
mistakenly asked for a lawyer, but no, they were all out of avocados. I re-gathered, further studied the blackboard
menu and ordered nargessi. And I'm so glad I did. Two eggs, cooked yet yolks runny, nestling in a generous dish of just cooked spinach and onions crisped in turmeric. Added
to this, a dollop of thick savoury yogurt and a large slice of toasted rye. Breakfast does not come much better than this.
Banibanoo's breakfast menu offers a savvy balance of popular Iranian/Middle Eastern dishes at the weekend, and more familiar tostadas during the week. In other words, different enough to interest people, but not so
foreign as to scare people off.
Sometimes a trend, or food movement if you will, is so prevalent it's hard to ignore. I suspect the possibility of me having a scrummy Iranian breakfast in a fairly conservative neighbourhood of Madrid is partially thanks to the¡ widespread success of Yotam Ottolenghi. Think tahini dressing, think shakshuka, think Ottolenghi's cookbooks. Bringing recipes and ingredients
widely used in Middle Eastern cooking to the foreground, his influence on menus is evident in major cities across Europe.Evidently, the time for such a menu was ripe in this well-heeled barrio.'Iranian market style food' fits with the revived
interest in markets of recent years, and the food is certainly fresh, though considerably
more expensive than you'd expect to pay in a market.Then again,€14 for a menu is not out of place in this area.
Lunch time sees an attractive display pilafs piled high. and vibrant,vegetable-based dishes.It's all the pages of the cookbook you stuck bits of post-its in but didn't get round to making. Plenty of options for vegetarians and omnivores alike. While none of the dishes stand out alone,choosing any combination of three for the set menu leaves you feeling sated and a tiny bit smug in the knowledge you've eaten well.
Banibanoo is
clearly aimed at Spanish tastes of a certain class; local arbequina olive oil on the table, alternative & soya milk available, and if you look closely over behind the cakes, a bottle of Beefeater. Judging by the number of Ralph Lauren sweaters, the clientele appears to be mostly local so there's a healthy hum of, mostly female, Spanish over the melancholy lilt of background Farsi music. Although relatively quiet while I was enjoying what is in hindsight probably breakfast for two, by 11am the restaurant had started to fill up.
All in all, I'd say the owner knows her
market well, and the restaurant certainly seems to be doing well.Previous attempts to procure a slab of just baked brownie on Friday afternoons tells me you'd be hard pushed to get a table without a reservation.
