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In the Metropolitan New York area, tapas bars are flourishing and seem to be sprouting like mushrooms in many youth-driven areas of the city and even beyond to once staid areas such as Connecticut. Some restaurants such as Andy Pforzheimer’s and partners’ string of Barcelona Wine Bars in South Norwalk (SoNo), Greenwich, West Hartford, Fairfield and New Haven, are sleek and modern with just the right touch of Spanish down-home rusticity. Others such as Yann de Rochefort’s and Seamus Mullen’s Boqueria and the newly refurbished Suba, and Jaime Reixach’s very Catalan Mercat are sleek, slick, modern, Manhattan-Barcelona cool in style. Alex Ureña, disciple of top Spanish chefs Ferran Adrià and Martín Berasategui and one of the foremost exponents of Spanish ultra-modern cocina de vanguardia in America, even closed his well-reviewed modern cuisine restaurant, Ureña, re-christened it Pamplona, and is now serving a sitdown “tapas” menu, albeit with many vanguardia touches. (Don’t expect a running of the bulls mural here. This is straight-up Ureña with no touches that recall Hemingway or the Fiestas de San Fermín.)
And then there are the very successful, truly rustic, tascas such as New York City’s Tía Pol, the new El Quinto Pino (all run by Mani Dawes [no relation to this writer], Heather Beltz and the rising star chef, Alexandra Raij). These two restaurants, along with downtown standby 1492, are reminiscent of great old time hangouts found all around Madrid.
Not to be overlooked in this Spanish wave are such well-known Spanish tapas restaurants as Solera (one of the first and best), Bobby Flay’s Bolo, Mario Batali/Andy Nusser’s Casa Mono/ Bar Jamón and Álcala (formerly Teresa Barrenechea’s Marichu).
These and many other establishments are helping to create a demand for authentic Spanish food products and Spanish wines that is growing exponentially. On these menus, diners will find staples such as Spanish olives, Spanish aceite de oliva extra virgen, the bright scarlet, triangular, beak-shaped piquillo peppers from southern Rioja and Navarra, salt-and-air cured jamón Serrano, Spanish artisan cheeses and, of course, a broad range of Spanish wines (some of the people behind Tía Pol have even opened an all-Spanish wine shop called Tinto Fino on Manhattan’s Lower East Side).<
Now selections of Spanish cheeses and embutidos (charcuterie) go far beyond queso Manchego and Serrano ham with artisan cheeses such as Mahón, Valdeón, Torta del Casar, Torta de la Serena, Garrotxa and Gamonedo showing up, along with pork-based cured meats such as newly-approved jamón Ibérico, chorizo Ibérico, Mallorcan sobresada and Catalan llonganiza. The Barcelona Wine Bar group is introducing Connecticut diners to such Spanish twists on American food as roast corn on the cob with Spanish paprika-and-lemon butter, sweet potato fries with honey goat cheese and sherry glaze, chicken with pimientos, and wild striped bass with piquillo pepper olive vinaigrette.
A Madrid-style tapas crawl is not only possible on foot in Manhattan now, it is getting much easier since places like Tía Pol, El Quinto Pino, Boqueria, Bolo, Casa Mono and Pamplona (in the Chelsea and Flatiron districts) and Suba, 1492 and Oliva (on the lower east side around Houston street) are all within a short stroll of one another.
To follow a tapas tour of the five Barcelona Wine Bars in Connecticut requires a car and for the sake of prudence, if you plan to sample some of Wine Director Gretchen Jacob’s excellent Spanish wine selections, a designated driver.
Gerry Dawes has been traveling in Spain for more than 30 years. In 2003, he was awarded the Spanish National Gastronomy Prize. Readers can visit his weblog at www.gerrydawesspain.blogspot.com Please contact gerrydawes@aol.com with any Spanish product or restaurant news. | |
