Review: Sangria's, Part II

One of the first restaurants we reviewed was Sangria's, a tapas restaurant where we had a light lunch. We knew it was just a trial, though -- we can't let a tapas restaurant go without a real meal. We went back for our anniversary (which was over 6 weeks ago, so that tells you how far behind I am) for tapas.

For our first round, we got the fried calamari, the patatas aioli, and the chorizo in wine sauce; the second round was meatballs and a salad. We got a carafe of sangria to accompany our meal. Anyone who knows the kind of eating we usually do at a tapas restaurant already knows that something was amiss if we only did two rounds of five dishes. And it was -- salt and oil.

The chorizo, for instance, was outstanding -- smoky, fatty chorizo, plenty of melt-in-your-mouth onions, a deep umami flavor to the sauce -- but it was all we could do to eat it all from the salt. Everything but the salad followed the same pattern -- delicious thanks to all of the salt and oil, but difficult to finish for the same reasons. Unfortunately, this is neither authentic to Spanish tapas nor appropriate to the ways Americans eat tapas. It might be more reasonable to start with a plate or two before a pan of paella (which we have not tried), but Sangria's was a difficult place to make a meal.

The calamari followed the same pattern: barely overcooked at all, far less so than most American restaurants, but Melanie likened it to Kentucky Fried Squid -- heavy breading that overwhelmed the flavor of the squid itself.

And so on: the potatoes were nicely fried, but swam in oil with a layer of heavy aioli on top; the meatballs were garlicky and flavorful, which was partially owed to the hefty helping of salt they had.

Sangria's does deserve applause, though, for their willingness to shy from an excess of consistency. The sangria had different fruit, following what was seasonally available, and the salad was topped with different stuff -- different cheese, different charcuterie, etc. Kudos to Sangria's for bucking the insistence that every dish must be cookie-cutter identical and keeping our palates entertained day after day.

In the end, that openness to variation could come in handy, since Sangria's is definitely the sort of place I could start out most any night with a tapa and a glass of sangria. For appetizers or a light lunch, Sangria's is wonderful, but for a meal -- maybe not so much.