The City is strange place. What is a bustling hub alive with endeavour, exaggeration and excess on work days becomes an eerily deserted collection of marbled squares and pitch black chain pubs at the weekend, as if traders are Cinderella-esque characters who leg it, afraid they’ll turn into gourds come 5pm on a Friday.

It was wandering through one such abandoned expanse of polished mineral, en route to the gym, that me and the other half first laid eyes upon Broadgate Circus, a rounded hollow barely a stone’s throw from Liverpool Street station. The jazzy decals in the windows bore evidence of the impending opening of José Pizarro’s latest venture, a prospect that, to us, was rather exciting.

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The stickers in the window say it all. Harden’s. Good Food Guide. Time Out. Square Meal. Michelin recommended. Toptable Diner’s Choice. A food hygiene rating of 5. Even a Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence (read into that what you will). Lardo in Hackney has the lot.

This may sound like one of the most sarcastic introductions to an article ever but is in fact a simultaneous ode to and lament of small plates, tapas or cicchetti.
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