SMALL BITES AT TABERNA DE HARO

Lately, I've been going to a lot of the restaurants around my apartment. And after a few trips to O'Leary's, Crispy Crepes and Sushi Express, Tom and I decided to have dinner at Taberna de Haro, the neighborhood tapas restaurant. I'd been to Taberna like 3 years ago, with Katie, Dustin and my best friend, but despite living literally 2 blocks from this place, I hadn't been back since. I don't remember it being bad, but I guess it's a case of taking for granted places that are close to you. Kinda like how I live 5 minutes from the beach in LA, and I never go to the beach there, but will drive an hour to go to a beach in MA.

Anyway, back to dinner. Taberna is often packed, but we were lucky and snagged the last table at the very back of the restaurant. The menu is organized into two sections- pinchos and tapas. Pinchos are basically pieces of garlic rubbed toast topped with different things. Lots of stuff with meat. Acutally it's kinda funny they chose to call them pinchos considering it's a swear word in Spanish, but i digress. Tom ordered 2 different pinchos. One with serrano ham and the other with bluefish? i think that was it. (I didn't photgraph these since I didn't eat them myself, but I think Tom liked the serrano ham.) Meanwhile, I ordered 3 tapas for us to share.

We started off with a small plate of potato salad. (that was a freebie). I liked it cause it was nice and garlickly. I apologize for the white on white pic. Just try to focus on the green chives.My first tapas was a plate of the patatas brava. I always order these. Basically fried potatoes. In this case, they were topped with a spicy tomoato sauce. I wasn't too down with that. I wish the tomato sauce had been used more sparingly or served on the side, cause they made the potatoes kinda soggy. I much prefer them at Toro, where it's served with a garlic aioli.Next, i got the sauteed mushrooms. These were pretty good. I think my favorite part was really soaking up the excess olive oil with pieces of bread. Totally yummy.And the last thing i ordered was a place of garlic chicken. I was a kinda disappointed by the chicken cause it ended up pretty dry. You can even kind tell from the pic. But again, I enjoyed dipping my bread into the excess garlickly olive oil.The thing with tapas at Taberna de Haro is that their tapas are much bigger than tapas at normal Spanish restaurants. I don't think they even call them tapas. They use a different term. So i ordered too much food. The problem is that that means you can't try as much stuff. And the other problem is that the larger portions means that the tapas are much more expensive per plate. Nearly twice the price of the tapas at other places. So dinner was pretty good. Not stellar or great. Personally, my favorite tapas place is still Toro, though it's near impossible to get a table after 6:30. I just prefer the smaller portions, better quality and creativity that goes into their creations. Of course in about a week I'll be writing about tapas in Barcelona, so I may revise my opinion then. For now, if you want tapas in the city, just try Toro. You'll be much happier there.