Moro owners to open third restaurant

Sam and Sam Clark, owners of Moro are to open their third restaurant, Morito, on London's Hackney Road in May this year.

The husband-and-wife team opened Moro on Exmouth Market in 1997, offering the flavours and ingredients of southern Spain and north Africa. In 2010, they opened Morito, a tapas and meze bar next door, offering food in the same vein but in smaller portions.

The new venue will be similar in style to the original Morito. It will be headed up by Samantha Clark and Marianna Love, currently head chef of Moro.

Morito will open its doors in May for breakfast, serving made-to-order Moroccan breads as part of the menu, followed by lunch and dinner of tapas dishes and larger family-style plates for the whole table.

Samantha Clark and Love have sourced produce from southern Spain, Morocco, Turkey and Crete to feature in the new menus, some of which they claim is not yet available in London.

The new site has been designed in collaboration with Dillwyn Smith featuring a horseshoe shaped marble-topped bar, open kitchen and large windows.

Sam and Sam Clark said: "We are very excited to be opening a neighbourhood restaurant in an area close to our hearts; we lived just off Columbia Road for many years and have happy memories of our time there. The new Morito on Hackney Road will have some of the food and design elements of Moro and Morito are known for, but with some exciting differences: inventive dishes, new ingredients, all served up in a fresh, colourful space with Samantha and our head chef, Marianna at the helm."

The pair met in the early 1990s having been introduced to each other by friends on the basis that they had the same first name and surname (Samantha's surname was Clarke before they married).

They both worked at the Eagle in Farringdon before joining Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray at the River Cafe

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