¡Tápame!

Tuesday night marked another wonderful tapas dinner at San Chez.  My favorite dish of the night was the chuletilla de cordero which was a lamb dish served with a raspberry chili sauce.  The sauce was sweet with just the right amount of spice to balance it out.  To top it off there was some sort of mashed potato ball on the side that was great with the sauce as well.  One of our more adventurous picks were the chichorrones, which are essentially just fried pig skin.  They were actually quite tasty and were amazingly similar to bacon but I couldn’t get past the sight of the freshly fried goosebumps that were left on the skin and only had a few.  We also had empanadas (fantastic!), a delicious veal dish with buttery breading whose name escapes me and of course wine to round out the meal.  As if that weren’t enough indulgence for one night, we finished off the night with a walnut tart for dessert at Bar Divani.

Empanadas at San Chez

I have long been a fan of San Chez but I was first introduced to tapas when I spent a summer in Spain at the age of 15.  Upon arrival in Madrid all of the other program participants were met by their host families but I was boarded onto yet another flight to Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, one of the northern provinces.  Once I got there I was met by a lovely couple who I assumed to be my host family.  We got in the car and they told me that they were actually just bringing me to meet my host family and we continued to drive for an hour or two to a bar in Gijón, the city where I would spend the next month.  In that bar, tired and waiting for my elusive host family, I learned that tapas originated as Spanish bar food.  The word tapas comes from the Spanish word tapar which means “to cover”.  Once upon a time people need something to protect their wine from fruit flies with, the natural choice was to use the plate your bar snack came on as a lid (a tapa) so the flies wouldn’t get in.  Traditional tapas include olives, almonds, tortilla española, cheese and bread among other things.  Of course, this is only one version of how tapas originated and you can read more about the other stories here.

How ever tapas came to be, they never disappoint and a night at San Chez is always something to look forward to.

Tags: San Chez, Spain, Tapas