Chef and restaurateur John McClements has many talents but naming restaurants is not one of them. Over the years his colonisation of Twickenham - and now Kew - with French-themed venues has juggled the words McClements, Bistro, Cuisine, Brasserie, Bourgeois, Ma and La in ever more confusing combinations. His latest enterprise, a Twickenham tapas restaurant, has been baldly christened El Vino.
Neither the name nor the interior decor - garish plates and duff pictures on roughly plastered white walls, tables covered with olive branch-patterned oilcloth, bunches of fake grapes - inspires much trust, but the reality, as with most McClements operations, is a joy, not least because of commendably modest pricing.
One chap, a dead ringer for John Malkovich in one of his more benign roles, served the whole room on the evening we visited when a table of six women were celebrating a birthday. Long, complex orders were handled with ease and efficiency and the ladies even got a cake and a song.
Two of my companions are the sort of vegetarians who have decided that fish is admissible.
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