Oh, hellow! Although the FTC’s blog has been dormant, the actual club has been active. We find time to eat, just not to write about it.
So, in our/my absence, we have visited three restaurants: Frederick’s, Le Reve, and Espana Tapas Bar. I am going to catalog these out of order since I have turned into the dude from Memento.
I had high hopes for Espana. I first had tapas at a lovely restaurant in Evanston, Illinois, a few years ago, called Tapas Barcelona. It was fucking fabulicious. If you ever have the pleasure of dining there, order everything. The Datiles con Tocino, bacon-wrapped dates, haunt me to this day. Also, drink a lot of sangria. I dare you not to.
The first place I found tapas in San Antonio closed after less than a year in business, then along came Bin 555. Our first and most-attended FTC activity took place there, and it was very good. We had paella, croquetas, some sort of meatball (albondigas?), serrano-wrapped dates, and many other delightful treats.
We went to a fabulous and fabulously expensive restaurant last month, so this month our wallets needed a break and we wanted to try something not French. I asked a co-worker who is either from Spain or Puerto Rico if she knew of anyplace in SA to get good tapas, and she pointed us toward Espana. It got a pretty good review from one of the local food critics, but since they’re all hacks, the review shouldn’t have been trusted. The strip-mall location might have been a clue, but when you live in a city like SA, you just have to accept that every so often you might find a decent restaurant in a strip mall, so the location didn’t exactly frighten me.
What did give me a little pause was the Saturday night flamenco show. Seriously, a little soft background music is all that should ever accompany a meal. It doesn’t do justice to either the food or the performance to melange the two. Think dinner theater. I did not tell the greggers, whom I had persuaded to come along, about the flamenco, because that would have worked exactly the opposite of persuasion. Plus, I wasn’t sure where the performance was relative to the dining nor how long it lasted. I thought it might be quiet flamenco held in a back room. Even so, I’ll try almost anything once and lie to other people to get them to accompany me.
We arrived to find the balance of the FTC waiting. We ordered some sangria, a fizzy variety, and dove into the menu. We ordered a large cheese and charcuterie plate to start while we contemplated what to try next. The plate that arrived was large — but there was very little food adorning it. What was there was good (not great), but how can you fuck up Manchego and serrano ham (except by not giving people enough of it)? It was accompanied by six grapes scattered artlessly on the platter, a few apple slices, and four sad, tiny slices of baguette, two of which were end pieces. An inauspicious start.
We moved on to ordering some hot tapas. I ordered paella; we also got some croquetas, calamari, artichokes with ham, and garlic shrimp. The paella had exactly no flavor. Rice-a-Roni has more zing. The croquetas were just ok, but there was no evidence of chicken having passed through them. I moved on to taste the shrimp. OK, but once again, very little flavor. Plus, they were prepared from frozen shrimp, not fresh. We live 3 hours from the Gulf of Mexico — there’s no excuse for frozen shrimp. The artichokes were quite weird — both flavorless and quite gritty. The calamari — also frozen.
In the meantime, the flamenco demonstration had begun. The dancing was much better than the dining, but if I get dancing with my food, I much rather prefer bad dancing (e.g., crumping) and excellent food. Plus, flamenco is really loud. REALLY loud.
So if you’re ever in SA and you want to have some excellent tapas, you can either a) change your mind, or b) go to Bin 555.
