pre-dinner

I did not expect a LINE outside the door shortly after 5:30 pm when Tertulia opened for dinner. Who are all these people who want to eat so early besides my old lady self? After managing to grab two seats at the bar, I was delighted to discover that the delicious sangria came from this oddity of a half-barrel mounted to the wall. I wondered if I should somehow install something similar in our apartment.

Okay, half-barrel daydreams aside...it was a relief to be up front at the bar to eat tapas, the ideal way to keep you from eating tapas for dinner, which inevitably leaves you underfed and overspent.

And was this dinner? Because it tasted like...


...breakfast! A glorious, glorious, eggy and bacony breakfast. For elves. Here, the cojonudo...revisted: two bites of smoked pig cheek, quail egg and pepper.


A rich and toasty pan con tomate, which is a far cry from all the other sad pan con tomates you think you've had.


The best way to eat tapas is also to eat OTHER people's tapas...ones that you didn't order but thought you had because you had wanted to but didn't and then ate and realized oh-dear-I-ate-someone-else's-tapas and they're sitting right next to me. That kind. Here, the culprit was the tosta setas: marinated mushrooms, smoked ricotta and pine nuts. And oh yummy it was good because it was so wrong. Oops. So sorry I ate your tapas!


But then the wild-caught amberjack comes along and makes everything even better. Lightly smoked amberjack with fabes beans and roasted peppers. Smoky, buttery, creamy, soft and melty.


Yes of course fried must rear its head at some point. The berenjenas rebozadas: fried fairytale eggplant, citrus yogurt and hazlenut pepper sauce. There was nothing fairytale about the way these things were devoured. Look away, people.


Who says you can't have dessert after tapas? Here, some rum-soaked cake with berries. Now, what's for dinner?