El Vergel is a stark restaurant with polished concrete floors and grey walls – one of which is covered in colourful doodles that look a bit like a five-year-old’s graffiti. Its menu focuses on Latin American and Mediterranean cuisine. Not that you’d know any of that by looking at its website, where the focus is more on its catering service than the restaurant.
This is a shame, because there’s a lot to like about El Vergel. The food I tried was simple and fresh; generously sized tacos were stacked with crunchy iceberg lettuce, strips of chicken and cool tomato salsa. Good too was the restaurant’s signature Chilean steak sandwich which contained a juicy slab of meat drenched in oozing cheese.
The hip space feels like it would really come alive at night. But instead, El Vergel closes at 3pm on weekdays and 4pm on a Saturday, making this strictly a breakfast, brunch and lunch place – a good option for a quick bite if you live or work nearby but not so convenient for the rest of us. Unless you’ve got a five-year-old who really likes drawing on walls.