Restaurant review: Hito in Ripponden

Step into the Hito restaurant in Ripponden at night and it’s like going into a twilight world.

For the first thing you notice are the candles - they are everywhere - and there is even subdued lighting around the bar.

Every table has a candle and every one is lit. That’s how it should be.

It’s warm, welcoming, inviting, relaxing.

The next thing you’ll probably notice is the wood panelling on the wall with each plank a different shade to give a Mediterranean feel.

And then there’s the large open kitchen - goodness, it’s getting like Masterchef or, God forbid, Hell’s Kitchen.

It was the Milestone restaurant before serving everything from pizza and pasta to fish, seafood, game, steaks and burgers and now it’s had a name change and gone all tapas on us.

Actually the name is different but the same. A riddle? Well, kind of as Hito is Spanish for Milestone.

It is part of the Boothwood Group of restaurants that include Catch in West Vale and Holmfirth and the Last Post pub in Ripponden.

Hito in Ripponden

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The wonderful thing about tapas is that you can have so many different tastes and textures. Meat chompers can suddenly be enlightened by a vegetarian dish they would normally shun.

With six starters and 21 mains to go at it’s not a vast menu (not a bad thing) and the challenge was on to find something we didn’t want.

But with four of us it meant we could give the menu a decent going over.

For starters we had house baked bread with whipped sea salt butter. Three pieces of bread for four of us didn’t seem that great on an investment of £3.

Yet the Arbequina Olives - oil-soaked green olives - were also £3 and we got plenty of them and some of them were huge. Best olives I’ve had for ages.

Main tapas dishes were gambas (king prawns) in garlic and paprika (£7.50), garlic cod with olive oil toast (£3.50), picante chorizo in mayador cider (£6.50), roasted cauliflower with goats cheese and a raisin and pine nut dressing (£5), patatas bravas with paprika and aioli (£4) and spiced lentils with creme fraiche and herbs (£4).

There’s usually a dish that really surprises with tapas and for me it was the lentils that were small, well spiced and just a step away from being a dip but showed that your humble lentil doesn’t necessarily have to be ever so humble.

The king prawns sure were royalty - big, fat, juicy and there were five of them so one of our party got lucky having two. That was me, by the way.

The cauliflower showed just how a vegetable can be lifted out of the realms of the ordinary while the patatas bravas was a good example of a classic dish and a fair sized portion.

Hito restaurant in Ripponden. Roasted cauliflower with goats cheese and a raisin and pine nut dressing.

While my dining companions liked the cod spread on the toast it was somewhat lacking for me but the picante chorizo more than made up for it and came in plenty of sauce - as did the prawns come to think of it.

Now, what to do with the sauce? A conundrum as the bread was long gone so we asked or some more. This time four slices came along with a further £3 added to the bill.

It’s the only dish we could look at and think it wasn’t worth it. The bread needs knocking down in price and at least four slices ought to be provided free. Even then there wasn’t enough to soak up all the sauce.

Then on to desserts and we had two - chocolate fondant with salted caramel (£6) and clotted cream panna cotta with strawberries and meringue (£6).

Two brilliant puddings with chocolate oozing out as soon as the spoon is stuck in - that’s pure choccie heaven - while the panna cotta looked like no other I’d seen with tiny meringues sticking out here and there and a thick centre and the taste was simply glorious.

A great meal in classy surroundings and just the bread for the management to think about.