The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Tapas. This is a mini chain in the DC area. I have been here several times before, and have always enjoyed it. And it is yet to be beat in the ‘Grandpa Mac and the baby’ dinner category – my dad was in town as well and we went out en masse. Its tasty enough, with a good enough wine list that its dad friendly, but loud enough to be baby friendly. The world needs far more restaurants like this.The menu is fairly consistent, but changes enough (and I go intermittently enough) that I have yet to establish a ‘regular’ meal, which is nice, because I generally end up with something new. We each ordered 3, plus 2 orders of the deep fried bacon wrapped dates (and we ended up getting a third, how can you go wrong, deep fried sweet salty goodness) . I picked a pan con tomato with Serrano (good, not enough garlic for me though), white beans with grilled pork sausage (eh, the beans were bland, the sausage was good, in an Oktoberfest way, a little was good for me) and peppers stuffed with goat cheese (tasty, a touch of spicy hot would have been great). Other things that struck my fancy were my sisters apples with manchego, (a dish they have remade – instead of julienned strips of apple and cheese it was slices of apple with micro-planed manchego – I liked it better in its new incarnation, my sister liked the old version. However its presented, its a nice combo, the apple and cheese, sweet and salty, crisp and bright versus soft and fatty) mushroom and Serrano croquettes (for all I don’t like mushrooms, they were better then similar croquettes I have had here in the past, the insides all oowy gooey but I could taste both the mushrooms and the ham), the grilled baby corn (possibly my favorite, so unlike the pickled baby corn I am familiar with its like a different food, it actually tasted like corn with a very tasty sauce), and a Spanish sausage and potato dish (the sausage was the diameter of a Slim Jim, and wrapped in a home made potato chip – the competition for favorite of the night, appealing in the same way pigs in a blanket are). We had 2 reds. The first was very much to my taste. See Alex’s comments for exactly was it was. Not as big or complex as the second one, but smooth enough to drink before food – but big enough to pair with food.

The design is somewhat bland. It feels like a mall restaurant to me, and for the meal they are serving, its fine. I will admit I am somewhat underwhelmed with restaurant design in DC, its getting better, and I haven’t been to any of the recently opened places, but the city has not redeemed itself from my original poor opinion (which can be summed up in Galileo having acrylic two in one salt and pepper shakers about 7 years ago).

B