Spanish – Page 2 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Mercat

45 Bond Street between Lafayette and Bowery
212/529.8600
$120 for two, with 3 drinks, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

It was a Monday night and Mercat has only been open for three days, yet the decibel level made it seem like it was a Thursday night. The place is packed; the white tiles immediately reminded me of Cal Pep in Barcelona. One of the bartenders gave me a long-stemmed pink rose to alleviate my 25-minute wait for a seat at the bar in front of the restaurant. (I saw later that every woman in the house was holding the same rose. I wasn’t so special after all.) The sausage and cheese station was manned by one doing all the slicing and plating and was surrounded by the curious also waiting for the bathroom to free up. In the back, the open kitchen was being watched by the more important people who sat at the chef’s bar. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

We started with the crispy sweetbreads on a bed of fennel, orange and capers. It was a light and delicious appetizer to an unexpectedly heavy meal. The grilled sardines were great with salsa verde even though I was picking small, thin bones off my mouth the entire time. What made my night, however, was the braised pork belly served with crosnes, my latest favorite vegetable. Never mind that it also came with asparagus which seemed pretty boring compared to the sauce that made the dish special: a dollop of preserved cherries. No one should be afraid of eating their meals with fruit; I could have eaten this all night with my glass of cava.

The mushroom dish will mostly likely leave Mercat bankrupt. For only $12–and I can’t believe I’m saying “only” here–I think I tasted sautÃ©ed morels, hen-of-the-woods, shiitake and crimini mushrooms on my plate. The last time I stopped by a Whole Foods, morels were going for $60 for a pound. A very earthy and filling dish served with crunchy strings of potatoes and topped with a fried egg was hard to resist even if the egg was a little overdone. They ran out of razor clams by 10pm and I totally missed the blistered Padron peppers from the top of the menu, so we finished with the snails and chorizo skewers. It sounded promising but what happened to this dish? The snails tasted like they’ve been in the bottom of an aquarium for days. The chorizo-tomato salsa could not even cover the algae taste that we decided to leave the dish unfinished.

From my experience at Cal Pep, the meals got better as the night wiled away. At Mercat, the night started inspiringly, but after I ate the snails, all I wanted was to rewind my experience back to the pork belly and back to Spain.

Tia Pol

205 Tenth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets
212/675.8805
$84 for two people with three drinks, without tip
♥ ♥ ♥

If you’re looking for a good tapas place in New York City, Tia Pol is most likely recommended. I rarely make it around the Chelsea neighborhood, so I visited about two years after the entire city has already fawned over it. Ever since they opened in 2004, the wine hasn’t stopped flowing and the customers haven’t lost their patience waiting for a spot. We waited for about 45 minutes to be seated with our glasses of wine one warm winter night. When we finally made it, it was as if the bartender was waiting for us all along. She was very busy, yet attentive. She forgot to bring out the lamb but everything else we ordered lifted our spirits. The food brought us back to Catalunya. The owners of Tia Pol say they opened a tapas bar because of an on-going love affair with Spain. I give it three stars for the same reason.

Casa Mono

52 Irving Place corner of 17th Street
212/253.2773
$120 for two, with two drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

Mario Batali took a lit bit of convincing to let Chef Andy Nusser open up a Spanish tapas bar under his name, but as told in Heat, a tasting knocked their socks off. Two years after they first opened, the place is still packed and the wait to sit at the bar is still long. We went out one cold night after I wrote about Barcelona with plans on eating at Bar Jamon but I’ve been there so many times that I just wanted to see how its sister restaurant compared. Without reservations, the wait for the bar was an hour. We put our names down anyway and waited in the pub down the street. One Guiness later, the maitre d’ called to seat us. We put our coats back on and ran back to the restaurant where he gave us two choices: a table that we will need to give up after an hour and a half for another couple who actually had reservations, or at the bar where we can watch the chefs cook. Which do you think we chose?

We split four plates and a dessert with our small carafes of red wine. We saw that the Cal Pep of Barcelona had its influence here with their deep-fried green peppers and chipirones, or baby squid, with garbanzos, or chick peas. The giant duck egg is also a mainstay but we skipped those dishes because we wanted to try something with Casa Mono’s own signature on it.

The cockles, or small clams, were cooked with sloppy scrambled eggs topped with scallions. It was a good combination but we could barely taste the clams. The sweetbreads were toasty on the outside and soft in the inside and the roasted fennel was a nice touch. I would like to think I’m difficult to impress and only good chefs would think of bringing two things like them together.
Speaking of another great combination, the pig trotters were made into breaded square patties sandwiched with white anchovies. The vinegary taste of the small fish provided a great balance to the overwhelmingly gelatinous and sticky quality of the pig’s feet. It’s definitely not for everybody but I loved it. (And if your dining companion ends up liking it, too, I suggest that you keep him.)

I had to admit that I only ordered the cock’s combs because I was tickled to say it. (What, the cockles weren’t enough?) Because they were cooked in a porcini reduction, they tasted like mushrooms even though they had the consistency of soft tofu. They looked like black slugs on our plates but the earthy taste was very addicting. Two scoops of plum ice cream with candied orange rinds and crunchy orange-flavored nuts were the perfect ending to these flavorful, sometimes oversalted, dishes.

Go to Bar Jamon if you want to have simpler tapas like cured meats, but Casa Mono is worth a try if you want to experience the Batali influence in Catalan cooking.

Boqueria

53 West 19th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
212/255-4160
about $100 for two, with a few drinks, without tip
♥

Arabella and I discussed dinner options and cravings one evening: I am Frenched out for the moment (her) and Can we keep it chill? (me). Tapas, an eating concept from the Basque Country, could be anything bite-sized on a small plate. It’s not French and it’s definitely the most laid-back way I can think of in terms of eating dinner, so to Boqueria we went. I am still reeling from my Catalan vacation and because I had lunch at the boqueria three times while I was in Barcelona, eating pintxos (pin-chos) was an easy pick.

The quail egg was fried and served on top of a sausage sliver and a crispy baguette. It needed a good drizzle of olive oil. I liked the idea of a date stuffed with almonds wrapped in bacon, but then again, I like anything with bacon. The squid was served with a handful of limp mixed greens; perhaps stewed chick peas could have made the dish more lively.

The consolation, however, was the service. The place got crowded as it got later but our bartender-server made sure she gave us her attention. She was very patient with the mixed crowd: one actually opened up his laptop at the bar and another kept screaming for a Syrah until she politely explained that he was in a Spanish bar. Men in suits kept bumping our backs with their obnoxious laptop murses, so she made us stay by comping a glass of white and a glass of sangria. Although the space is very sleek and the buzz infectious, the food at this Boqueria could be a little more inspired.

Bar Jamon

125 East 17th Street on Irving Place
212/253.2773
about $125 for two, with a few drinks, without tip
â™¥ â™¥ â™¥ â™¥

Jamon is Spanish for ham and Bar Jamon is the most recent translation in the New York City scene. Mario Batali’s latest digs is right next to Casa Mono, his fifth restaurant in New York City. The space is good for fifteen couples at most, but more than thirty were inside, even on a Tuesday night. We squeezed ourselves in to eat tapas and drink Spanish wine and new guests jumped to the next stool that freed up. A little jazz and a little Wilco were playing when we were there, but the music was so faint compared to the collective noise of those who had the same idea as we did.

With two bottles of Tempranillo, we shared two plates of ham cured for fourteen months. We also got the sardines en escabeche and marinated anchovies with migas de chorizo or sausage crumbs. We snacked on a plate of two kinds of cheeses and enjoyed their bread with some good olive oil. We didn’t think we’d stay past 9pm because of the crowd but as soon as we snatched the stools in the back, we ended up staying for two more hours.

Bar Jamon is a scene all right, but it’s a New York City scene and that you can’t pass up.