BAR CESAR, BERKELEY

A few weeks ago Sue Min arrive in the Bay Area. She'll be starting dental school in a few months, and stayed with us a night before we got ready to head down to LA together. So for dinner, we decided to take her to tapas (having just arrived from Singapore, she was in no mood for Asian cuisine). My friend had told me of Bar Cesar, a popular restaurant in the Gourmet Ghetto, and since we had not yet had tapas in the Bay Area, we figured it was worth a try.

When we arrived at the restaurant, it was packed. It was a beautiful, sunny day and lots of people were out. Luckily, we were able to snag a table pretty quickly and only waited about 10 minutes before we were seated at a table right on the sidewalk. They started off with a small dish of olives and then we ordered quite a number of dishes to share.

First I got a dish of deviled eggs, which were pretty good.

And we got a plate of three Spanish cheeses which Tom and Sue Min enjoyed.

But all of a sudden, they started bringing out all the dishes at once. We started running out of table space and they had to bring an extra small table so we'd have enough room for everything. Below is a plate of orange & avocado salad with orange red-wine & cumin vinaigrette (not enough avocados) and a spicy tuna and egg sandwich. (which was pretty good).

By this point, the food started coming out so quickly, that I didn't really have a chance to take pics. Below, you can see a plate of patatas bravas. It was not my favorite version of this dish. The potatoes were cut into large hunks, covered in a sauce and then in a garlic aioli. It was just too heavy. In the rear is a plate of anchovies, which Tom loves.

We also got a pan of paella, which oddly enough, was served with an enormous dollop of garlic aioli on top. I've eaten paella in Spain several times and have never seen this done, and was actually kinda appalled. We ate around the aioli, and our server was actually pretty surprised that we didn't touch the aioli.

Overall, the service was quite nice and the tapas were decent enough. Oh, one of my favorite tapas dishes that I ordered, a plate of pimientos del padron, weren't well cooked, and ended up being quite a bit greasy. The thing was, this place was really expensive, and so, I don't think the cost was worth the quality of the food. We'll keep looking for a good tapas place in the Bay Area- perhaps with a trip to SF.