Tapas lunch

What a novel idea, I thought, when I first saw the noodle-wrapped shrimp, one of the tapas we had for lunch today at the West Hill Wine Bar.  The shrimp was wrapped in egg noodles and then deep-fried. The noodles protected the shrimp and sealed in the flavour, you get the crunch from the noodle instead of from the batter.  I can see this can be a fail-safe way to get crunchy shrimp and not having to worry about preparing a batter, avoid the mess often associated with it and the uncertainty when it comes to crunchiness.

Of course, when I looked it up on the internet, there is really nothing novel about it at all. There were lots of recipes and variations on this primarily Thai dish.  The shrimp could be wrapped in all kinds of noodles, from single strand egg noodles to a whole mass of egg noodles, tightly bound or loosely fluffed, vermicelli, or basically any kind of soft noodle - your imagination is the limit.  Some recipes called for marinating the shrimp but I would nix that as shrimp tastes best in its natural state.   At the Wine Bar, it was served with a mango slaw and a tamarind soy dip - all very refreshing contrast to the deep-fried shrimp.

We also had fried egg plant with sesame, wild mushrooms, grilled calamari, grilled sirloin, sweet potato tower and Baba Ganoush with nan.  All quite tasty although slightly on the salty side.  This is the first time we had tapas for lunch and when I come to think of it, it is actually a format more suited to lunch than dinner - rather like Chinese dim sum!

Noodle-wrapped shrimp with mango salad; fried egg plant with sesame

Grilled calamari

Grilled sirloin and sweet potato tower

Baba Ganoush with nan - such drama in the presentation!  Nothing Spanish about that but then this is a Toronto version of tapas - a celebration of cultures by Chef Chris Kanka, one of the competitors for the Top Chef of Canada title.  Good luck with his new restaurant - fine dining in "Scarberia".

Tapas - perfect for the adventurous!

What better way to try different things on the menu than to have tapas - small plates of food (like dim sum except they can be complete meals).  We tried them many years ago at Casa Barcelona in Bloor Street Village, then the real thing in Madrid.  Both were quite good but what overwhelmed us a little was the way the dishes were brought out all at once.  The mix of tastes confused the palette.  

Small plates restaurant have become very popular in North America.  We visited one when we were in California, The Basin in Saratoga.  Food was not great but we also shared the small plates between 5 people, too many, I think, to get a real taste of the food even if you ordered many plates - everyone wanted to try everything.  Ideally, a small plate should be shared between two, maximum three and if you have a larger group, order two of the same. 

We had an excellent small plate experience at Cava, in Toronto.  For good reasons, this has been rated one of the top ten restaurants in Toronto (by critic Joanne Kates) with Chef Chris Mcdonald at the helm.  We tried six dishes and they were served individually except for the last two when the asparagus was like a side dish for the almost "main" venison. We could have gotten by with four as the two big ones were really main courses - they were bigger than some "big plates" restaurants!  

   

Bruschetta of edamame, grilled green onions, moroccan olives and sicilian tomatoes  - love the ground edamame and the mix of the olives and tomatoes really enhanced the flavour!

Salt cod cake with piperade and chipotle crema - the piperade was a nice contrast to the salt cod in both taste and texture

Seared scallops done to perfection with ragout of artichokes,  cipollini and piquillo peppers - this is more like a "big plate"

Duck magret with trinxat and violet mustard sauce - duck tastes great,  no sauce needed although the sauce was quite interesting

Venison anticucho with a warm red cabbage salad and asparagus with lemon pepper aioli - again aioli hardly needed because the asparagus is so fresh and sweet.  But the venison was the best ever!  It was tender and tasty.  Not normally a cabbage fan, I enjoyed the flavour of this soft pickled red cabbage.

Lemon pistachio baked alaska with saffron-pepper cake and sherry-poached pears -  the pistachio ice cream is the best I have ever tasted - I can actually taste the pistachio!

Apparently Cava make their own desserts, which explains the long dessert list.  The baked alaska was the first item on a list of eleven items!  I just noticed a Valrhona chocolate souffle with Spanish coffee sauce - now why didn't I see that earlier?!  This definitely calls for repeat visits!

And to top it all off - there is free corkage (at least for now) on Sundays!  This really made this a good value restaurant in spite of complaints about the prices. 

Three Nights of José Andrés - Night 2: Jaleo Las Vegas, again

Mrs. A and I returned to Jaleo the following evening for dinner.  We sat at the same booth, looked at the same menu and wine list, and felt just as excited as before.  We employed the same strategy of ordering two items at a time to avoid having too many dishes arriving at our table simultaneously.

We started with Jamon Iberico Fermin with pan con tomate and Aceitunas rellenas y aceitunas ‘Ferran Adria’.   We never got tired of Iberico ham.  The pitted green olives were stuffed with anchovy and red sweet piquillo pepper.  The five dark balls were ‘Ferran Adria’ liquid olives.  I picked one up with a spoon and put it in my mouth.  It burst on my tongue, and there was nothing but a small amount of liquid with an intense favor of a salted olive.  Both tapas went well with the cava - Huguet Gran Reserva 2007 – that we were drinking.                       

Jamon Iberico

Olives stuffed with anchovy and piquillo, and ‘Ferran Adria’ liquid olives

What came next were Esparragos blancos con limon y tomillo and Ostra ‘Gin & Tonic’.  Californian white asparagus were presented in a ‘tin can’.  The tips leaned out at one end of the can and the bottom of the stalks were cut and arranged vertically at the other end.  They were dressed with lemon, thyme, and topped with shaved idiazabal, a smoked nutty flavored sheep’s milk cheese from Basque, and lemon zest.  White asparagus could be tough, but these were tender and refreshing.         

White asparagus with lemon, thyme and Idiazabal chees

I gathered that Chef Jose Andres loves gin and tonic as it pops up here and there on the menu of his restaurants.  The shellfish in Ostra ‘Gin & Tonic’ looked like Kumamoto to me.  Each oyster had a few drops of gin and another few drops of tonic water on it, and topped with slivers of lemon zest.  The taste was very different from oysters in their natural jus or with mignonette sauce.

Oysters with lemon and Gin & Tonic

I ordered Huevo frito con caviar again.  This time I stopped the food runner from cutting up the egg for me.  It was so much more fun to break the egg myself, watched the yolk slowly oozed out, and mixed the ingredients gently so I could spoon a glob of caviar together with a lot of yolk, large pieces of egg white and some of the onion confit into my mouth.  Eating the egg that way was more satisfying to me than eating it thoroughly mixed the night before.  I loved this dish.

Huevo frito con caviar

The shrimp dish, Gambas al Ajillo, was very good too.  Half a dozen of shrimps, peeled except at the tail, were served in a small copper pan with a rich tomato sauce seasoned with garlic and red pepper.  The delicious sauce reminded us of something similar in ‘Chinese style western cooking’ of earlier period.  Our waiter suggested an order of bread, pan con nada, to mop up the sauce.        

Shrimps sautéed with garlic

Mrs. A’s Sopa de ajo was sent to the wrong table, and a new one was made for her.  The soup bowl arrived with two pieces of thin toast curl standing over a slow cooked egg (the 63 degree egg) in it, and black and regular garlic puree painted on its side.  The food runner poured the soup into the bowl tableside.  Unfortunately she poured the liquid directly onto the toast, which immediately collapsed and ruined the presentation.  That course was the only hiccup for the evening.  Unknown to us, the restaurant took it off our bill.  That was a graceful gesture.  

Garlic soup with black garlic and 63°C egg

Our last savory dish for the night was Pulpo a Feira Maestro Alfonso - boiled octopus with pee wee potatoes, pimento and olive oil.  The incredibly tender octopus required almost no chewing; so were the potatoes.

Boiled octopus with pee wee potatoes, pimento and olive oil

There were more items on the menu that we liked to try, but we had to save room for dessert.  However, we did not get to order.  Our waiter said Chef Carlos was making for us the classic Spanish flan “al Estilo tradicional de Mama Marisa” with espuma of Crema Catalana and candied orange peels, orange sections and sorbet.  The flan was rich in flavor, very creamy but a little grainy in texture, which I liked.  It was simply the best flan we have ever had.

Classic Spanish flan with ‘espuma’ of Catalan cream and oranges

During dinner I noticed that the roast pit was put into action.  A chef was roasting a suckling pig over fire.  The pig was special ordered by a large party that evening.  The manager told us that Jaleo serves cochinillo asado – roasted suckling pig - every Sunday night.  That alone is a reason for us to return in the future.  

Suckling pig (front) and Paella over fire (left in the back)

Three Nights of José Andrés - Night 1: Dinner at Jaleo Las Vegas

Mrs. A and I visited Las Vegas recently.  Before the trip, we did some research on restaurant there and were most impressed by the tapas menu at Jaleo.  So we had dinner there on our first night. 

It took us a while to find Jaleo on Level 3 of The Cosmopolitan Hotel.  I expected an enclosed restaurant with a formal entry, but it turned out to be a large informal place with no wall along its front.  On one side were tall bar tables surrounded by the bar, a huge fire pit, and an open kitchen for cold dishes.  The kitchen for hot food was hidden in the back.  On the other side were four booths adjacent to the open kitchen, and a large number of tables.  We sat at one of the booths; leg room was a bit tight, otherwise very comfortable.  We had an excellent view watching the chefs preparing cured meat dishes and salads.   

Jaleo was casual and lively.  Its décor was playful.  With pop music playing in the background, diners talking inside the restaurant, noises coming from the outside, and sound bouncing from all its hard surfaces, the noise level surprisingly did not bother us at all.  

Jaleo Las Vegas front

Jaleo Las Vegas bar area

Jaleo Las Vegas dining area

Being unfamiliar with Spanish wine, I ordered a bottle of cava – the Spanish sparkling wine.  We took our waitress’ recommendation for a Raventós i Blanc 'de Nit' Rose 2009.  It went well with our food.

We started with the seleccion de jamones - Spanish ham sampling plate - with jamon Serrano, jamon Iberico (aged 1 year), jamon Iberico de Bellota (aged 3 years), all from the producer Fremin, and pan de cristal con tomate fresco, the crispy toasted bread brushed with fresh tomato for eating jamon with.  I was surprised that Jaleo used a slicer instead of slicing the ham the traditional way by hand.  The Serrano ham was the leanest, and not as flavorful as the Iberico ham.  Mrs. A liked the jamon Iberico the best, and I preferred the jamon Iberico de Bellota, which was deeper in color as well as in flavor.  The bread was a little soggy though the garlic tomato sauce was tasty. 

From the left: jamon Serrano, jamon Iberico, jamon Iberico de Bellota, pan de cristal con tomate fresc

While I was busy eating ham and tasting the cava, the huevo frito con caviar (fried egg with caviar) arrived.  It was a beautiful ball of fried egg sitting on onion confit and topped with a heap of caviar.  The food runner immediately cut up the egg into tiny little pieces and mixed vigorously the runny yolk, soft egg whites and everything else together.  That was a good way to enjoy the dish, though I would rather do the cutting and mixing myself.  Runny egg yolk with a glob of caviar was velvety salty heaven.

Arrived next was calamares en su tinta con alcachofas y cebollitas - seared fresh squids with squid ink sauce, artichokes and pearl onions.  The small squids looked like Japanese hotaru ika and they were tasty.  The salty squid ink enhanced their flavor.  We were told later by the chef that all the guts were left inside the bodies of the squids, which is also the way Japanese eat hotaru ika.  Delicious!!

Seared fresh squids with squid ink sauce, artichokes and pearl onions

The canelones traditionales de cerdo y higado de pato con salsa béchamel (pork and foie gras canelones with béchamel sauce) was not what I expected.  I thought it would be like the Italian pasta tubes.  The version at Jaleo was moist shredded pork in a gratin dish under a sheet of small pasta squares, covered with béchamel sauce, sprinkled with cheese and browned in the oven, in the tradition of Catalan.  The smoothness and juiciness of the pork indicated the presence of some foie gras.  It was a very nice dish. 

Pork and foie gras canelones with béchamel sauce

 My dessert was ‘Gin y Tonic’, a gin and tonic sorbet with fizzy tonic ‘espuma’, lemon and aromatics.  I gather that Chef José Andrés likes gin and tonic as it shows up here and there on his menus at Jaleo and his other restaurants.  I liked gin and tonic myself too.  Mrs. A was not impressed with the ‘classic Spanish coffee’.

Gin and tonic sorbet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After dinner, Chef Carlos Cruz Santos came out from the kitchen to greet us.  He was very friendly and spent time explaining some of the dishes to us.  He said we missed Chef José Andrés by a week; he was there making paella and having great fun with the kitchen.  We told him that we enjoyed our dinner very much.   As there were many items on the menu we wanted to try, we would be returning the following evening.  We also mentioned that our third dinner at Vegas would be at é by José Andrés, a micro-restaurant hidden inside Jaleo.  Thus three nights of José Andrés.

Chef Carlos Cruz Santos