Tapas This

As I said earlier, I'm in DC for a work conference. Actually, my hotel is in this place called Crystal City, which is somewhere between DC proper and Ronald Reagan Airport. It's basically like a fake city that was built specifically for the convention crowd. There's a bunch of hotels on a strip with a bunch of chain restaurants littering the main strip. There are also a couple of underground malls with more restaurants and crappy souvenir stores (can someone tell me why a place with weather as nice as DC feels the need to build so many underground shopping areas?). So, tonight, after being unsuccessful contacting old friends in the area, I went to get dinner by myself. I decided to go to this Tapas place called Jaleo which is a few blocks away from the hotel. I've actually been to another Jaleo last summer when I was in DC for another conference. That was the one downtown, and although I thought it was okay, I didn't love all of the choices the friends I was with picked out for dinner, and was hoping tonight would be different. A couple of my DC-centric friends have vouched for this place as having great Tapas. Unfortunately, I can't say they were correct. Tonight I went with some standard fare - chorizo, a Spanish tortilla, and string beans with garlic and Serrano ham. All were labeled as "traditional" in styling. Unfortunately, neither the chorizo nor the tortilla was like anything I had before. Neither were bad, so I'm not going to complain too much, but overall, it wasn't what I was expecting. I did have some great wine, however. Lorinon Crianza Tempranillo 2003, Rioja Spain and some free cheeses. It was no Tia Pol or even Las Ramblas. But it was okay. It was the Disney version of Spanish Tapas.

And since we're talking about Tapas, I figured I would mention my favorite Tapas bar in Madrid (out of the ones we were able to try): The Alhambra on Calle de Victoria. It may not look like much, but it's always crowded, the bartenders are really friendly, and they serve good, cheap wine. While the Tapas menu may be small, everything we had was excellent. They tend to serve everything either with or on this fantastic toasty bread, which goes great with some chorizo or manchego cheese. We actually went there twice, which says a lot that we'd rather go back there than try somewhere else new.



NP: Vancouver, Jeff Buckley