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"We are proud to be a real Spanish restaurant," says courtly owner Mario León Iriarte, born in Argentina of Basque parents. He and partner Tamara Bourso opened in 1989 and do no advertising, yet word quickly got around. Their restaurant near the Cambridge border packs in people at the tapas bar with its copper plate tiles made in Seville and the crooked picture of Dalí on the wall behind.
Hanging over the bar is an incredible assortment of items: serrano ham, wine skins, salt cod, dried flowers, ropes of garlic, baskets of corks and copper pans. Eleven cold and twenty-one hot tapas ($4.00 - $7.50) are on the regular menu, and every month more are on the "Inspiraciones" menu. Served in cazuelas, they vary from garlic potatoes or caperberries to garlicky chicken or pork tenderloin with goat cheese and wild mushrooms.
To go with the tapas, there are more than 25 kinds of sherry and 60 wines, many under $25 and all Spanish. That's not all - two dining rooms with tiled tables are beyond the tapas bar. The decor must be seen to be believed: curved rails here, Daumier reproductions of Don Quixote there, a wonderful mural of a bacchanal by Mark Steele, walls the color of "blood of the bulls," a plaster arch that makes one think of the Alhambra - it's wild and wonderful, and quite charming.
A favorite entré is Pescado a la Sal, Dalí's signature dish: Sea Bass baked in a crust of salt that is broken when the dish comes to the table, leaving the fish pure and simple and smelling of the ocean. The Rabbit is braised in juniper berries, cinnamon, serrano chiles, sherry vinegar and red wine, and could be accompanied by mashed potato rosettes and red cabbage and apples. Of course, there's Paella... Valenciana and del Oceano - yum. End with flan, crépes filled with fruit and topped with chocolate sauce and orange liqueur, or a dish of quince paste and manchego cheese."
