WHEN Paul Heathcote told me he had not really spent much time in Spain until very recently (for research purposes), my heart sank. Surely commitment to a £1m traditional Spanish restaurant must spring from a lifelong passion for all things edible and Iberian, not some hunch about a gap in the market?

The omens were not good. The high street tapas chains (you know who I mean) have foisted some indifferent loads of old abondigas and patatas bravas upon us over the past decade.

In similar fashion, the Heathcote restaurant empire's bottom tier is a phalanx of Olive Presses springing up across the land like toadstools - and just as unappetising. The `Med to measure' stock-in-trade dishes and sometimes shoddy service are a bizarre counterpoint to the brilliant cheffing and front of house at his flagship Longridge restaurant, while new, more upmarket ventures such as London Road in Alderley Edge have opened to a very mixed press.

Grado's Italian manager Marco and Brazilian sommelier Marcelo surely sent out odd signals, too, for a restaurant with ambitions supposedly forged in the cutting-edge culinary hotbed that is San Sebastian.

So it was with the trepidation of a novice matador tiptoeing into a scarlet-spattered bullring that I called in en route for a Rodrigo Y Gabriela concert (think a cooler Mexican Gypsy Kings - it seemed appropriate). With me was La Pasionara, who shared a few hectic sherry-tasting days in Jerez last summer (OK, it's a shameless plug, but read my report in tomorrow's MEN Weekend).

Taking the bull by the horns we waltzed over the threshold into the city's best new restaurant space in ages.

Calm efficiency

To our right was a tapas bar, not the main event, just casually doling out the diddy dishes all day to fino-sipping folk on stools. At the back, across the 80-cover dining space an open-plan kitchen radiated calm efficiency.

To our left there was a raised section with a few choice tables, to which we were led by accomplished frontman Marco Ficini.

It was as if we had shimmied in off the street in downtown Barcelona or Madrid. The manzanilla was tinglingly cool, everything on the menus and wine list was tempting and La Pasionara was pouting over a Catalan boy waiter.

``I wish it was Monday, El Capitano,'' she whispered. ``Why? Is that his afternoon off,'' I whispered back. ``No, silly, the special that day is suckling pig with morcilla (black pudding) and potatoes.'' You can take the girl out of Toledo, but you can't...

Indeed at a very affordable £12.95 Grado offers a `daily roast from the charcoal oven' - lamb, beef, chicken and, to start the week, infant pig.

In a restaurant priding itself on crockery, furniture and wines 100 per cent Spanish, it is an irony to find this Castilian speciality hailing from Garstang, but then it is from that redoubtable operation, Pugh's Piglets.

Clams with sherry, olive oil, tomato and parsley was a meagre portion for £7.95 but each little mollusc was a sweet, pungent marvel of Spanishness. La Pasionara's sardines on toast starter (£5.95) had the unusual addition of a sheep's milk cheese and a scattering of herbs. The sardines were sea-fresh and flaky, the cheese's tart tang a fascinating match.

Orchards

La Pasionara has a thing about fresh figs. They remind her of orchards in old Castile; unromantic me of constipation syrup. Duck with figs and honey, accompanied by roast chicory, its bitterness caramelised out by sherry vinegar, was a classic, almost Arabic sweet-sour main.

My companion found the duck served rare a touch chewy but was otherwise sated for £18.50.

My main (£17.95) was simply glorious - a hillock of bomba rice (short and round, the grain for paella par excellence), a concentration of rioja jus, prunes and pine-nuts, sage-infused tender rabbit parts scattered artfully around the plate.

Duck and rabbit were both perfectly matched by a hefty, pruney, figgy Priorat red from what is a contender for most interesting wine list in town. This Finca El Puig 2002 (puig pronounced pooch, Catalan-style) cost £37 and bottles at Grado rarely drop below £15 but, as with Gaucho Grill's Argentinian showcase, there is lots beyond the norm to explore.

Much-neglected sherry is represented here by La Gitana for manzanilla, but by the glass there is the extraordinary `antique' range of Fernando de Castilla sherries - palo cortado, amontillado and oloroso - at quite ordinary prices.

Oh and there is the dark, treacly delights of Pedro Ximenez. Such is my delight in Jerez's classic `sweetie' I ordered a glass to accompany my pud - peach ice cream drizzled (but do the Spaniards really know what drizzle is?) with Pedro Ximenez!

The ice cream was priced at £6, La Pasionara's dense warm chocolate pud with hazelnuts at 50p more. ``So soothing I could bathe in it, El Capitano,'' she cooed.

On my next visit I intend to hibernate at the bar and wade through the sherry and sample the selection of Spanish cheeses with truffle, honey and quince, but we were late for our foot-stomping rendezvous with Rod and Gab at the Academy. So we saluted the late Spanish flowering of El Generalissimo Heathcote and charged away into the night.

Grado, New York Street, Piccadilly (part of the Bruntwood redevelopment), 0161 238 9790.

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