Moro

The menu is rewritten completely every three weeks and adjusted slightly every day in between, which is the venue's own number and the reason a twenty-nine-year-old restaurant has not gone stale (Moro).

Why go

Sam and Sam Clark opened this on Exmouth Market in 1997 and built the cooking on the 700-year Moorish presence in Spain, which is why Spanish, Moroccan, Iranian and Turkish dishes sit on one menu without any of them being blurred. The kitchen states the rule plainly: dishes are "made authentically, true to their specific origins" (Moro).

The kit is the argument. A wood-fired oven sits at the middle of the open kitchen and bakes the bread, a charcoal grill runs beside it with lamb and chorizo on it, and live sourdough and yogurt cultures are kept going in the corners (Moro).

Time Out called the Clarks' restaurant and cookbook the benchmark for British Iberian cooking with a North African turn, and said they were still in the front rank fifteen years in (Time Out). Eileen Twum, scoring it 8.2 in 2022, put it in the present tense: a kitchen that pushed seasonality twenty years before the rest of London still has a menu that moves (The Infatuation).

Order this / avoid

• Order: whatever came out of the wood oven, and whatever is on the charcoal. The bread, since the culture for it lives in the kitchen. A Spanish or Portuguese bottle from a list Time Out called "a spectacular showcase" (ref). Pinning a dish is pointless here, because the board turns over completely every three weeks.
• Avoid: a quiet conversation. The room is hard-surfaced and "conversations must be conducted at a shout" (ref). Sundays, when it is shut. Turning up without a booking.

What locals & experts say

• Eileen Twum, The Infatuation, January 2022, scoring it 8.2: "Moro was one of the first to make the use of seasonal produce a thing nearly 20 years back, and still today, their regularly-updated menu will take you on a mini adventure, combining local meats like rabbit with some of the great spices and flavours they encountered on their travels." ref
• Time Out, 2013, unsigned, on the standing and on the faults: "Sam(antha) and Sam Clark's Exmouth Market restaurant and cookbook set the benchmark for a distinctly British style of Iberian-with-a-North-African-twist Mediterranean cooking, and they're still in the front rank 15 years later." The complaint in the same piece: "some elements were a little too oily: the olive oil is first-rate, granted, but it can still be over-used." ref
• The venue, on its own kitchen: "The wood-fired oven that is its warm heart fills the air with the smell of baking bread while lamb and chorizo sizzle on the charcoal grill. Homemade yoghurt and sourdough cultures are tended in quiet corners." ref
• No chef has named it in our corpus, checked under both Moro and Morito on 1 August 2026. For a kitchen with this lineage that reads as a gap in our vote coverage rather than a verdict on the food, and it is recorded as one.

Good to know

• Where: 34-36 Exmouth Market EC1R 4QE, Clerkenwell.
• Timing: lunch and dinner, closed Sunday. A Sunday Lunch Club runs separately, per the venue's own menus page.
• Booking: essential. Getting a table has been the standing complaint for two decades.
• The room: open kitchen, hard surfaces, loud. Bring the group that wants that.
• Next door: Morito, the tapas bar, trades separately on the same street.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, inspected 6 May 2026, Islington, with all three components at 5. This is the most recent inspection of any venue in this batch. FHRSID 416220. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His raw saved-places export carries an empty Note against this row. The master line "Sam and Sam Clark's Moorish standard-bearer since 1997" is curation text; the names, the date and the Moorish framing all check out against Time Out and the venue's own restaurant page.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth rearranging an evening for, and book it well ahead. Sam and Sam Clark opened Moro on Exmouth Market in 1997 after a long trip through Spain and North Africa, and the kitchen still cooks to the Moorish inheritance rather than to a fusion idea: Spanish, Moroccan, Iranian and Turkish dishes made to their own origins. The reason it has not gone stale is a number the venue publishes itself, that the menu is rewritten completely every three weeks and adjusted slightly every day in between. At the center of the open kitchen is a wood-fired oven that bakes the bread, with a charcoal grill next to it running lamb and chorizo, and live sourdough and yogurt cultures kept in the corners. Eileen Twum scored it 8.2 for The Infatuation and made the point that matters, that a room which pushed seasonal cooking twenty years before it was normal is still moving. Two honest caveats. Getting a table has been the standing complaint since the last century, and the hard surfaces mean you will end up shouting. Bring people who want a lively night rather than a conversation.