Best Spanish Tapas
STAFF PICK: Café Triana is one-half of the new expanded space of chef Pedro Sevilla, one of the city's favorite chefs. Often, his menus have included tapas from his native Spain. With Café Triana, Sevilla focuses on tapas in a lively and engaging setting. Tapas can form the base of any meal. It is eating that does not overfill. After a meal of tapas, you should be able to leave table content, unstuffed, and ready for more. At the Café Triana bar, while you wait for your table, you can sip a glass of sherry and nibble pitted manzanilla olives in a briny and fragrant marinade with onion, fennel and thyme and almonds which Sevilla has lightly smoked and toasted in his own ovens. At the table order from both hot and cold tapas, or satisfying soups, including authentic Andalusian gazpacho. Of the cold tapas, salpicón de mariscos is a generous portion of chilled, fresh cooked shrimp, mussels and squid in a sprightly vinaigrette. The boquerones en vinaigre, large, fresh anchovies from Spain in a sharp marinade, may be an acquired taste, but with the good bread offered, a great taste tease for other items on the table. Also good cold are the sautéed artichokes with pinenuts, and plump, poached mussels in a vinaigrette. Among the hot tapas chorizo al Jerez is good garlicky sausage cooked in a sherry wine reduction. But the albondigas are more than simple beef meatballs. They seduce taste. Calamares fritos are quick-fried baby squid, crunchy and tender, served with a tartar sauce redolent with dill. A dish of three of these with Caesar salad would make a grand meal. Café Triana is at 2959 N. Swan Road.
