Pop in for Lamb Lollipops at Midtown's new Tapas Bar

By Ashby Stiff
SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT

A mere 40 interior seats in size, the weeks-old Tapas Bar & Restaurant conjures stunning modernist form and spatial design into an illusion of luxurious space. A facade-wide veranda overlooking Thomasville Road adds 50 contemporary seats for fair weather dining. Next door, a sister operation, The Winery@The Red Bar, offers another 100 or so seats, a comprehensive wine cellar and a popular full service bar.

In serving this expansive culinary domain, young exec-chef Owen Hardin, fresh in from a three-year stint at Kool Beanz, captures the tapas concept and propels it to creative, deliciously taste-tempting small plates for lunch, light dinner or late evening supper.

Some professional restaurant smarts are at work here. Both creator-proprietor John Gardner and service manager Chris Holbrook are graduates of the Dedman School of Hospitality at FSU. A Club Corporation of America alumnus, Gardner spent three recent years in management at the University Center Club.

When planning Tapas, he started with the soaring black ceiling with the floating yellow panels of the former Thomas Eads Gallery and worked down. The walls segued to charcoal brown, a color reflected in the lengths of banquette seating.

Save for the dark brown of the tiled service bar, the occasional colorful print and maple-toned flooring, all else is black, which noticeably highlights the square white tapas plates. An alert staff of attractive young servers is uniformed in black.

Except for the sanitation area, the entire kitchen operates within the small, open enclosure behind the service counter. There is no walk-in cooler or freezer. Storage is under-counter. Deliveries are made, and all menu items are prepared in-house, daily.

This ensures food freshness and quality, and eliminates the need for having a lot of money tied up in idle, aging inventory, Gardner explains.

The 14-choice tapas menu, and two or three daily specials, might be considered abbreviated, but the variety, originality and artistic presentation of the dishes offers something to entice everyone, including vegetarians.

Also, sensible pricing — no unimportant factor in these times — thins the wallet only by $25 or less, tax and tip included, for a tapas plate, wonderfully crusty French bread with perhaps orange-zest butter, and a glass of a good, modest wine.

We loved the mint-garnished, pomegranate-glazed Lamb Lollipops, the several baby chops of which shone bright pink atop minted pearl couscous and grilled eggplant tapenade, casually capped with a lentil papadum chip. The variety of flavors and textures come together like the strings, bass and woodwinds of a symphony orchestra. Price: $12 and worth it.

Closer to home, a generous lot of cornmeal-fried Apalachicola Oysters, crisped only to the edge of flavor preservation, arrive bedded on a unique fontina cheese-grits cake. To the side, a pot of smoked jalapeno remoulade easily could lure us away from a long-term commitment to perfect Franklin County tartar sauce.

Closer to the heart of this errant Marylander, a duo of small Crab Cakes mixes fresh lump blue crab meat into silver queen corn cakes, browned to a golden hue and served with Meyer lemon tartar sauce and crunch-crisp Tabasco fried shallots.

It's a delicious variation on the crab cake theme, but should we live to be 100, our benchmark still will be those wonderful Worcestershire-drizzled sensations served in the Oak Room at Baltimore's long-gone Belvedere Hotel.

An Oriental theme bows in with Duck Spring Rolls, their crisp wonton skins encasing lots of duck confit, daikon and napa cabbage. Spicy Thai chili sauce adds just the right soupcon of Asian zing. A primo small dish, this.

Tapas desserts include a striking Strawberry Cheesecake Martini and a good, rum-rich Bread Pudding scattered with chocolate bits. But it's Crème Brulee Cheese Cake that lingers sweet on the memory. Don't miss it.

Tapas: Yet another A-List addition to Midtown dining.

©Tallahassee Democrat 2009, Reprinted from the Tallahassee Democrat.