Billy Big Bollocks and an overdue visit to Bar San Juan
A different San Juan than the one I wrote about the other week
I’m not the kind of person that eats at the same place every month.
In the same way that other people seek new heights of adrenaline from ever more dangerous sports, and others go from a toke on a spliff to injecting crack into their toes, I am constantly seeking a new thrill when it comes to what to eat. Luckily, the world is unfathomably massive and I will never get bored of travelling to new places and eating things I can’t pronounce. But even without jumping on a plane, there are also more restaurants in Greater Manchester than even a determined (and gluttonous) creature like me can get around.
Even though I have spent the last five years or so writing about food in Manchester as a job, I still have a list of places I haven’t eaten at. My job in media has always meant, to a large extent, heralding the new. Working in Manchester, which has spent the past decade having a rapid growth spurt (it now has a moustache and needs to wear a beanie hat to contain its unruly head of hair), it’s often a challenge to keep up with what’s new. I have spent years writing articles about new restaurant openings and there have never been fewer than 10 in a monthly roundup since 2018. This fixation on the shiny-shiny often means older restaurants get missed in the press, no matter how much you try and cover those too.
Maybe one day I’ll share a list of my favourite old codgers of restaurants. I have a few.
But today, I want to admit that it has taken me this long to get to Bar San Juan in Chorlton. I almost feel embarrassed to confess this. It has been high on my to-do list since way before I became a professional food writer. When I was working as a pastry chef and waitress at a city centre tea room, one of my colleagues would never shut up about it and ever since I have met similar evangelicals. I have even written about it, researching online and collecting anecdotes from friends who’ve been, as many writers have to do about things they haven’t experienced themselves. The last time I wrote about it, I convinced myself I had to go.
The main reason I hadn’t been was that for years it was walk-in only. I couldn’t be arsed to schlep all the way to Chorlton just to be turned away disappointed. The pandemic and its expansion, spilling out onto the pavement, changed that. So my friend Tom booked us a table for three.
When I say I’m a glutton, I mean it. I think this comes more from the aforementioned thirst to try new things than a desire to turn my own liver into foie gras. My biggest FOMO is food FOMO. So I will say with no regrets, that the three of us shared 13 dishes at Bar San Juan. In this baking heat, the chefs throw more flames around their pincho-sized kitchen than you’d find at a Rammstein concert. The dishes come at you rapidly, soon the table fills - a visual representation of your lack of restraint.
Monkfish skewers, garlicky prawns, deep-fried cheese, lamb filo parcels, Russian salad (the love of my life) on crisp toast, the essential padron peppers. The place buzzes like San Sebastián, clattering and chattering with life. I love it. The red walls covered with framed postcards and scraps of art and photographs. The brazenly patriotic red and yellow palette. The vintage tiles. God, I’m a sucker for a patterned tile. What took me so bloody long?
But my favourite dish was the one I’d known I would order before I even stepped off the tram. The one I’d heard about from many recommenders. The one that’s named after a big set of testicles. Billy Big Bollocks as my ex-boss used to call me when he thought I was getting cocky. He was trying to nip my confidence, whereas when the Spanish say cojonudo, they are saying how impressive something is. Fittingly, cojonudo - according to this blogger - started out as cojonudo, feminine, a woman with big balls. Now it tends to be called cojonuda when it’s made with morcilla (blood sausage) and cojonudo when it’s made with chorizo as the ones at Bar San Juan are.
Slices of skinny baguette are spread with sobrasada: spreadable chorizo, topped with a tiny fried quail’s egg and finished with a drizzle of olive oil. They are two bites of flavour that combine three of my favourite things, eggs, charcuterie and lovely, lovely bread. I can take or leave truffle oil but it does add another mushroomy layer of interest to these ultimate snacks. I pair mine with a glass of Tio Pepe, ice-cold fino sherry, my favourite thing to drink in a tapas bar.
I say I don’t go back to places every month, but now and again I go somewhere that I immediately want to return to. So when I have been around the next 10 or 20 places on my to-eat list, I hope to return to Bar San Juan for more. I haven’t completed the menu yet. So let’s make that the thrill.
What are your favourite places for tapas in Manchester?
I know Google translates Morcilla as 'Blood sausage', but it's essentially Black Pudding - my late grandfather was from Madrid (although he spent most of his life in England in my family), and he would often be craving morcilla along with many other traditional Spanish dishes, such as Callos - a stew consisting of beef tripe and chickpeas - so we would frequent tapas bars and other Mediterranean restaurants throughout my youth 🙂