City sensibilities are just too large to sit comfortably in cosy Jose, a tapas restaurant that celebrates good quality produce by presenting it with simplicity. Indeed, gastronomic flamboyance is not needed here, as even the seemingly smallest of ingredients are carefully, and seamlessly, considered.
The restaurant is small, but like its dishes, perfectly formed; and an environment that finds diners within earshot of one another just adds to an ambiance that would be more suited to a hot, Spanish town than Bermondsey Street.
Fresh, unpampered fish, like hake or sea bream, is topped, carefully, with lightly fried morcilla and soft onions. Plump strips of a tender Iberico fillet are drizzled in thick, intense olive oil. The tortilla is so good that it should be ordered at every visit and the chorizo, fried, or bathed in wine, depending on the season, is always richly flavoursome. In fact, all of the dishes seem to be crafted with time of year in 
mind, as if the chef, Jose Pizarro, lives forever a little in rural Spain where good ingredients are found freshly dug from the soil or picked from the sea.
The wine list is select too, careful not to overfill the restaurant, which seems always to maintain an intelligent balance of bustle and intimacy. Night-times are busy, making weaving and squeezing necessary, but the occasional brush with a passing waiter is no concern when flavours are so big.
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