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.

LONDON: DAY 3

For our third day in London, we had planned to wake up early, visit some museums and have lunch. But when we got up, we decided to scrap the museum plans and have a leisurely Sunday morning instead. For breakfast, we got pastries at one of the local chain coffee houses, Coffee Republic. Now, when places in London say they serve coffee, what they really mean is that they serve espresso and espresso drinks. Tom likes to drink drip coffee and when I asked the employee if they had any, she said, "what's that?". So he got an Americano instead.

I ordered a hot chocolate, which tasted like Swissmiss. And Tom ordered two pastries, which are below:
Overall, it was a lot like Starbucks (except I had refused to go to the Starbucks a few doors down). Afterwards, we started on a little walk to head up to Harrod's. A few friends had suggested that we buy a picnic lunch at Harrod's, and then eat in the nearby Hyde Park. However, when we arrived at Harrod's, it hadn't opened yet, so we headed to Hyde Park first and spent an hour sitting, reading and people watching.

When Harrod's opened at noon, we headed off to check out their famous food halls. The food halls at Harrod's are quite expansive and are organized into lots of different room- like seafood, charcuterie, fromagerie, etc and what's interesting is that almost each room also has a little food stall so that you can dine indoors if you want (there was an oyster bar, a wine bar, a rotisserie, etc.)

Here are some of the pics I took:

PastriesMarzipan Fruit (do people ever eat these?)Sushi (ok, honestly that didn't look all that tasty)And some prepared seafood items:It wasn't exactly cheap, so I picked up a few pastries and went for our backup plan. Near Harrod's is a restaurant called Leon- a local chain that specializes in Eastern Mediterranean take out food (but you can also eat in). So we headed over there to pick up our main meal before going back to Hyde Park. It had a hippie-like decor, lots of casual and comfortable chairs, low tables and strings of little lights. We headed to the back and placed our order, and it was up in a few minutes (it was really like healthy fast food). We also picked up a baguette for Tom, so he could munch on the cheese he had bought the previous day at Borough Market, and took everything back to the park where we found a bench.

From Leon's I had ordered a sweet potato falafel sandwich. I'd never had sweet potato falafel before- it was much softer and squishier than normal falafel, and it was also sweeter, but I enjoyed the flavors and found this to be quite good.
Meanwhile, Tom wanted to try a couple of things, so he got appetizer portions. This was their baked "chicken nuggets" in a yogurt sauce.And this is an order of lamb meatballs. Tom enjoyed both dishes, but he like the lamb meatballs more.To finish off lunch, I had bought two tarts at Harrod's- one is a pear and almond tart and the other is a strawberry tart. Both were well made and delicious, and not too expensive (in pounds that is- they were 2.5 pounds each), but of course, that means I paid $10 for two tarts.

After lunch, we headed up to Islington, in the northern part of the city, to visit Jayna. I had also wanted to visit a chocolate shop up there called Paul A. Young. They actually had a pretty interesting array of chocolate flavors, and is one of the few chocolate stores I'd recommend in London. But what they also had was ice cream with chocolate sauce. It came it lots of different flavors- I got a walnut brownie ice cream with chocolate sauce. The coolness of the ice cream forced the chocolate sauce to harden the minute it hit, so it formed this hard shell. The best part were the toasted almonds and hint of cardamom.Jayna ordered a rose infused ice cream and Tom got a chocolate ice cream with chocolate "pearls". I think we all enjoyed our snack. Then we spent the afternoon walking around Jayna's neighborhood. We stumbled upon a small local street fair, where we got to hold owls! while Tom took pictures of us.

After all the walking, we headed back to Jayna's to rest a little and have tea. But before you knew it, it was time to head back to our hotel and get ready for dinner. My cousin, Cynthia, lives in London, and she wanted to take us out to dinner to a Spanish restaurant in her neighborhood called Cambio de Tercio. It is a tapas restaurant, and much fancier than any of the other places we'd been to on this trip. When Cynthia arrive, the waiters were all familiar with her, and she started ordering right away- a platter of ham, sangria, and we also pitched in and ordered a few things. Here's an order of gambas al ajillo on the left, and my favorite pimientos del padron on the right. The shrimps were delicious, but the pimientos weren't the best I'd had (I like the ones at Toro more). Here's my order of a portabello mushroom carpaccio- very thinly slice mushroom with olive oil and salt. It's a simple dish, though not my favorite. I think I prefer my mushrooms cooked. Meanwhile, everyone else at dinner was enjoying their various dishes of pork. Tom was able to order Jamon Iberico- that special Spanish ham made from black footed pigs raised only on a diet of nuts. I think he enjoyed that.

And I finished dinner with this pretty platter of ice creamsI don't think they were homemade, but the strawberry was my favorite. And I liked the plate that they served it in. Overall, dinner was really good, and we had concluded yet another busy day of walking and eating.

NANTUCKET DAY 2 AND BACK IN BOSTON

We awoke in Nantucket to driving rain and high winds. We were in full Nor'easter mode, here, with the rain coming in at a 45 degree angle. We packed up and decided to head for breakfast and then to the ferry. While struggling to get to breakfast ( a mere 5 blocks away) we got completely drenched. So it was a real pleasure to enter the Fog Island Cafe, where we were immediately welcome and shown to our seats so we could take off our wet layers.

We were served coffee and given the menus. It was clear that the places was full of locals. The summer season hasn't started yet on Nantucket, and attendees of the Nantucket Wine Festival hadn't really shown up quite yet, so being surrounded by locals was quite nice. While perusing the menu, I was going through the typical dilemma of salt or sweet? Omelette or scramble? Initially I was going to order the Nantucket Fishcakes, Benedict-style, but I thought it'd be too rich. Tom ordered them instead. I think he enjoyed them a lot. They were packed with fresh seafood and crab, which I kept picking out and eating.

Meanwhile, I had a special scramble for breakfast. It featured a lot of stuff I can't recall right now, but I was won over by the mention of artichokes. It was quite tasty and the homefries were pretty good (though they couldn't compare to the ones we'd had the previous day). We didn't welcome the idea of going back out into the rain, but ran for the ferry terminal. Then it was a rocky 2 hour trip back to the mainland. I was thrilled when we finally docked and I was once again on firm ground. After that, it was a drive back up to Boston, and when we finally reached the warmth of our apartment, it was nearly 5. I was able to shower and get dry and then it was off to dinner with a group of friends at Tasca.

When we left for Nantucket, dinner at Tasca had been a group of 5. That's a pretty good number to go with, because Tasca is a tapas restaurant, so everyone can share and try lots of dishes. However, at some point the number had ballooned to 10 people. Huong had made a reservation for 8, and Tasca takes reservations up to 6:30, but the servers were quite helpful in accomadating our large number. Unfortunately, Tasca won't seat you until your entire party arrives, so around 7, we finally got to sit down. Tom and I were starving and exhausted after our long trip from Nantucket, and were eager to eat. Since there were 10 people at dinner, chaos reigned. There was no way that we could all order together, so basically people got to order whatever they wanted. Tom and I each picked 3 tapas and we tried a number of others since we all ended up sharing. Here's a pic of one half of the table:Here's a plate of roasted duck leg served over red cabbage and apples. I hadn't ordered it, but did get to try it. The duck was tender, falling off the bone, but it was also dry. It was an ok dish and it was one of the ones that went unfinished. I ordered the patatas bravas:Leek Tart:and gambas al ajillo:
My favorite was the leek tart. The pastry was crispy and the filling flavorful and soft. The gambas were also pretty good, but the waitress took it away before I could finish dipping bread into the garlic infused olive oil.

Toro is still my favorite tapas place in the city, but I think Tasca is pretty good, too. The good thing is that it is certainly less expensive than Toro, with each tapa coming in around $4-$8/plate. If you do end up going here, I highly suggest going with a smaller group, but I think you'll have an enjoyable experience either way.

WHY I SHOULD STOP GOING TO TABERNA DE HARO

Most of you know that I live right around the corner from Taberna de Haro. It's not my favorite tapas place in Boston, but it's decent eough and if you order carefully, you can avoid most of the pitfalls on the menu. Think simple. Think vegetables. Think meats that don't need to be cooked. (like ham) We don't go very often, and if we do, it's earlier in the evening because you can get a seat quickly. (This place is perenially packed after 7.)

Last night I visited with a few of my female friends. Though it was crowded, we got a seat after a 20 minute wait, which wasn't too bad. However, one thing that I will always say is that no amount of excellent, delicious food can make up for bad service. Excellent service can make up for mediocre, ok, food, but it just doesn't work the other way around. Last night at Taberna de Haro, we got fairly decent food and pretty shoddy service. I won't be going back again.

It's funny, cause I just finished reading Ruth Reichl's book, Garlic and Sapphires, which I highly recommend to anyone who reads the NYTimes dining section. As the head food critic at the NYTimes, she had to come up with different disguise so she wouldn't be recognized when she was visiting different restaurants (you can bet that Frank Bruni does not go through the same trouble. He lives for the attention he gets from restaurant owners and chefs. But I digress.) She writes a lot about how depending on how she was disguised, she would received different levels of service. Now, I work in the food industry and I assess my customers, too. Everyone does, but I also try really hard to treat everyone well. After all, I'm often surprised that people visit my shop at all. Last night, we got horrendous service by a waiter who deemed us unworthy of his attention.

The waiter brought out our mens and water pretty quickly. He reeled off the specials, and when it came to drinks, we didn't order anyway. None of us really drink and two of us were driving. He then went off and we didn't see him again- for the rest of the night. Apparently, he decided it was more worth his while to shower attention on the 4-top and 2-top that came in after us. The 4-top had ordered sangria and I could see him lavishing his time on them, explaining the specials and making suggestions for ordering. The 2-top had ordered a bottle of wine. I even made eye contact with him at one point, but we continued to be ignored, sitting at our table with our menus folded in front of us, just waiting for some to take our order. We waited for 20 minutes until another waitress, who wasn't even in charge of our table, finally took pity on us, and noticed that we were sitting there with an empty table. She took our order. I was fuming at this point. My friends were hungry and had it not been for their presence, I would've walked out a long time ago.

What also made me mad was that this is a small restaurant, and I could see the owner of the restaurant circulating about, serving dishes and contributing to the neglect of our table. Thank goodness for the one waitress who took pity on us. I vaguely felt bad for her, since she was handling our table in addition to her other tables, but service continued to be non-stellar. She was concious of the fact that the kitchen had forgotten one of our dishes, so she rushed to get that order in, but I felt it was unnecessary to give us the dessert menu, while the entrees were still on the table. (Especially since no one was waiting for a table) And to hand us our check as we turned down dessert.

As for the food, it was OK, as usual, because basically stuck with my careful ordering. (The only place we wandered off was with an order of octopus, which I didn't try, but was told was chewy)

So thanks Taberna de Haro, for making us feel unwelcome and unwanted and then rushing us out the door. That'll be the last time I dine with you.

BITES

The Amateur Gourmet likes to call his random thoughts section "Nibbles". So I'll call my random thoughts section "Bites". THAT'S how creative I am. I haven't eaten out at many new places lately, though I have been to a number of places I hadn't visited in a while, so I thought I'd give you a quick update on my dining thoughts during the last week.

- Hey, have you guys noticed the cool new addition to my website? It's a meebo widget. It's right here, to the right. So basically it's this chat program, and when I'm shown as online, you can message me using the little window. And we can chat. Cool huh? We have Tom to thank for this fun new edition. Try it out.

- Now that restaurant week is over, I have rather unsuccessfully attempted to save money and eat in more. I think I've eaten in once during the last week. Which is the number of times I've gone to the gym. But I blame this on my friend Jess being in town. It's just hard to eat in when you have house guests. Speaking of house guests, I also have a new addition to my apartment, the mouse. He runs around in my room late at night, scurrying around, finding caches of chocolate that I've long forgotten about and generally keeping me awake. Hopefully my building maintenance ppl will actually do something about it and soon. Otherwise I'll be borrowing my friends' cats.

- I went to Wilson's again this weekend. I love that place. I saw cherries and they were $5/lb. But I decided this would be my last cherry purchase until next year. So I splurged, and spent $13 on a bag of cherries. Yeah, it's a lot. But not as much as the $25 that I spent on a bag at Whole Foods last year. Sigh. I love cherries.

- And speaking of Wilson's, I also bought these fantastic golden cherry tomatoes. They're so much sweeter than regular cherry tomatoes. I bought two baskets for Tom, but ended eating one myself. I haven't bought any heirloom tomatoes yet, even though I know it's prime heirloom tomato time and all anyone can talk about is heirlooms. I wasn't excited about the ones I saw at the South End Open Market and the ones at Wilson's were kinda big. (Leah bought an enormous man-tomato), but I'm gonna pick some up tomorrow at the Brookline Farmer's Market.

- We tried out brunch at Toro last Sunday, and I would advise you guys to pass. Toro is much better for dinner. They had far fewer tapas on the menu than I expected. We did get some great potatoes and crepes, but the egg dishes were generally disappointing, and pretty pricey. Both Jess and Leah got the scrambled eggs with avocado and aspargus, but they arrived without avocado. I guess they ran out and forgot to mention it, so that was disappointing. My huevos rancheros weren't so great either. Though I did enjoy the flavorful salsa, there were far too many beans and not much of anything else. And $12 was a lot for the size. Next time, I'll visit my other favorite South End breakfast places, like Metropolis.

- Don't ask for wine recommendations at Petit Robert. It's been months since I've eaten at Petit Robert. Oh, and did you know they've already opened a second location in the South End? Anyway, I digress. We went there for dinner a few nights ago for Jess's last night here. And it was a pretty decent meal. Jess enjoyed it and that's what's important. I like it when you can get 3 courses for dinner and still pay under $35 for good food. However, I was very annoyed at our waiter. Jess wanted to order wine with dinner and asked for a glass of Riesling (which they didn't have. Oh, and she picked up the Riesling habit from me, since it's one of my favorite wines). I realize that Jess truly enjoyes Riesling cause it's a sweeter wine (but that's offset by the acidity of the wine, so it complements food well), so she asked the waiter if there is another wine that he can recommend that is also sweet? And what does he do, but takes out the DESSERT MENU and starts to recommend a muscat and then a banyuls to her. I nearly flipped. I hated the waiter's assumption that since we looked younger and were dressed casually that we'd have no knowledge of wine. And if he lacked the knowledge to recommend a good wine, he should've admitted it, and looked to someone else for help. I scanned the wine menu and realized there probably wasn't anything on there that Jess would've liked, so she ended up not ordering a wine. But it would've been worse had she ordered a muscat to go with her skirt steak. Yikes.

- A French macaroon does have meringue in it. Don't question the pastry cook that used to pipe out 400 of these things every few days for a petit four plate. Actually, all macarroons have meringue in it. Even those coconut ones. Yeah, I've spent many an hour rolling hundreds of those too.

and that's all folks!

NY DINING DAY 2: PIPA

Day 2 in New York was not a huge dining day for us. It was more a working day for me. I spent the morning walking the bottom floor of the Fancy Food Show (the smaller floor) and then met up with Tom, his brother and the brother's gf for a casual lunch in Cobble Hill. We went to a cute local French restaurant to eat and afterwards, checked out a couple of chocolate cafes in Park Slope.

For the evening, we went to a reception at the Michel Cluizel chocolate shop in ABC Home and Carpet in the Flatiron district. I hadn't been to Michel Cluizel's only outpost in the U.S. because when they opened last year, it was during the NYC Chocolate Show and I just hadn't had time. So the reception was a great time to check the place out, have some free drinks and free chocolates (of course). The store was actually much smaller than I thought it'd be. I thought there would be more seating and more of a cafe setting. And I will admit, it was a bit of an odd setup since it was right inside ABC Home and Carpet, so it didn't have real walls and it was sandwiched between two restaurants. In some ways, it reminded me of my own store. It was nice to see though, and I certainly enjoyed the drinks.

For dinner, since we were inside ABC Home and Carpet anyway, I had told my buddy Moses to meet us at Pipa, a tapas restaurant that was immediately adjacent to Michel Cluizel. This would be the fancy dinner for our trip. My friends had all gone to Pipa before, but I'd never visited, preferring Craftbar which used to be immediately across the street (it's now moved a few blocks away). The setting is dark and filled with these crazy chandeliers. Lots and lots of chandeliers that are all available at ABC. They each have a price tag on them and they are super expensive (in the price range of thousands), but they help set the mood.

When Moses arrived, we were quickly seated at a table. He wasn't very hungry, so Tom and I ordered a number of tapas to share. Here is my order of wild mushrooms. (ok, I've blogged about a few tapas restaurants now. Have you noticed that I tend to order the same things?)The mushrooms were pretty good, but nothing extraordinary. And then I ordered my typical gambas al ajillo.I did like the crispy garlic. But I didn't find the shrimp to be really fresh and they were kinda bland.

I also ordered this Scallops a la Mancha seared diver scallops with caramelized onions, Manchego cheese & crispy Serrano ham. I guess I wasn't really paying attention to the ham part, because then I wouldn't have ordered these had i noticed that. Anyway, here are the scallops below.
I really do prefer seared scallops. And all the toppings on the scallops made them soggy and pretty unappealing to me. I think Tom ate most of it.

And lastly, Tom ordered the Champinones mushroom croquettes served with a frisse salad dressing with truffle trumpet vinaigrette. I didn't end up eating any of these cause I'd already had enough mushrooms. Overall, I enjoyed the setting of Pipa much more than the food. Although, I must say that the service was pretty horrendous. We were generally ignored. It took forever to order and when we finally wanted to pay and leave, it took quite a lot to find a waiter. I expect more out of NYC restaurants. I think they were bit off because the resturant was quite empty and quiet for a Saturday night, tho not surprising considering it's summer season in NY. However, in the future, I would rather stick to my cheaper, more enjoyable hole in the walls than visit a place like this.

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.

TORO! TORO!

Fine. This place is only called toro. (not in reference to the fish, in japanese, but the bull, in spanish). And this being a Spanish Tapas restaurant/bar, I thought i'd invoke what the Spanish call out during a bullfight. But back to the review. Last night Arti, Karishma and I had dinner at Ken Oringer's new tapas bar in the South End. Now, for those of you who don't know, Ken Origner is one of those Boston celebrity chefs. He also co-owns Clio and Uni in the Eliot Hotel. This new resturant just opened a month or two ago, and I heard it was actually affordable (unlike the other two places), so I definetly wanted to try it out. Plus, it was cool to actually see the chef/owner serving ppl and working at his new place.

So when Arti and I arrived at the restaurant, at 6:15ish, there were some people in the restaurants, but still a good number of tables left. They wouldn't seat us until the whole party arrived and they don't take reservations, so we waited at the stainless steel bar where we both got a glass of cava (a spanish sparkling white wine). I enjoyed my glass of cava, but it was a little sweet, though arti enjoyed it much more than i did. She didn't like her glass of rose cava which was more dry. We also had time to check out the place. It has nice exposed beams, brick walls, high ceilings and big windows. Yet it was still dark inside. I definelty liked it. Oh, and it had an open kitchen and I like those. Unfortunately, very soon after we arrived, the restaurant and bar filled up very quickly. When Karishma got there, we were told it'd be a 45 minute wait for a table. (which sucked since we'd already been in the place for like 20 minutes) So my advice is to get there early and make sure your whole party is present.

Luckily, we were able to snag two extra seats at the bar that were right next to ours, so all three of us were able to sit there and have dinner. Sometimes I actually enjoy sitting at the bar more than at a table. Here, it was sort of mixed. Our bartender was very friendly, but he was the only one there. So he not only had to handle drinks, but also serve all the ppl crowded around the bar and we were neglected for various periods of time. Not as bad as Pomodoro, but not great either. The food made up for this though. And here's what Arti and I shared:

we started with these fried green peppers. they're seasoned with just sea salt and are totally tasty. apparently 1 in 10 of them are supposed to be hot, but i had a hot one and it really is a very mild heat. Definetly try these. I almost wanted to get a second order.

Then we got these potatoes. Which are fried and served ontop of a tomato sauce. But the best part of the dish was dipping it in the delicious garlic ailioli. sorry for the blurry pic.

Ok. this next dish was a little disappointing for me. It's a dish of mushrooms served with an egg and some foam. The foam is tasteless, but it's supposed to look like the white of the egg, get it? at any rate, i think the mushrooms could've been more flavorful, and when they arrived at the table, they were just warm.

Next up was the grilled corn. I think this was my favorite dish of the night. Not as good as the grilled corn from Cafe Havana in soho, but still really tasty, with the hint of chili, lime and cheese.

And our final tapas was smoked duck. Which actually tasted like it'd also been fried, due to the crispiness of the skin. I also really liked this.We finished off our meal with three orders of churros with chocolate. As in fried dough with powdered sugar and a side of chocolate sauce for dipping. I think this was the most disappointing dish of the night. If they were going for spanish or mexican style churros, the batter should've been much denser. And i wouldn't have minded some cinnamon sugar. If they were going for a little version of the churro, then it should've been much lighter. Basically, these tasted like the frying oil temp was a bit too low, causing the batter to absorb too much oil and become a bit heavy. They were tasty, I just didn't love it, and don't think i'd be getting again.

So my favorites were the peppers, duck and corn. The price of the tapas ranged from $3-$12, though the vast majority stayed in the $6-$9 dollar range, so the standard tapas price range. I think that's pretty nice, given the setting, the famous chef and quality of food. I'll admit that the plates tended towards the smaller side, but nothing completely unreasonable. If you don't drink, I think you can still have a satisfying meal in the hi-2os range. And i certainly look foward to returning and trying some of the plates that I missed.