Tapas

You know tapas dining has become part of the American mainstream when a restaurant that specializes in the small plates comes to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. This weekend, La Tasca opens its doors at Harborplace's Pratt Street Pavilion, in a two-story space where a Tex-Mex eatery and barbecue restaurant had resided. It's the third U.S. addition for the United Kingdom-based chain. The other two La Tascas are in the District of Columbia and Arlington, Va. Christopher Novashinski, the managing partner of the Baltimore location, says each floor has its own patio, bar and seating for 400, a mixture of tables and chairs and benches with cushions.

Off to a good start, with the cleaning in preparation for Kathleen's family's descent upon us this afternoon, accompanied by the lessons and carols from King's College on the radio. Kathleen and J.P. are finishing up the tapas for late afternoon and the Ukrainian holy supper afterward (mushroom soup, sauerkraut and barley, four or five species of pierogi). Alice is on her way over, and I have the wine chilling. Kathleen, of course, is obligated later for the Christmas pageant at Trinity, Towson, and in gratitude for my absence from all such involvements I will later pour myself a second glass of wine.

Not so long ago, I was telling people I thought the tapas trend had run its course. Small-plate restaurants like Pazo in Fells Point were adding regular entrees to their menus, and new places seemed to be going back to the traditional appetizer and dinner entree model. One unexpected consequence of the economic downturn may be the resurgence of tapas. With full-sized entrees costing upward of $30 in what were once moderately priced restaurants, customers are taking another look at those small plates.

Centro Tapas Bar has closed. The Riverside restaurant's last meal was served on Saturday night. George Dailey, owner of the popular On the Hill Cafe in Bolton Hill, opened Centro Tapas Bar in the spring of 2010 in the old Bicycle space. Dailey, who was raised in Venezuela, brought a South American twist to the tapas at Centro -- Venezuelan corn masa cakes  topped with oxtail meat, avocado and a fried egg; chicken livers dusted with crispy corn meal; sweet-corn pancakes is topped with queso blanco and a chili glaze.

So you're going out at night and you're wearing your cutest miniskirt and your favorite top (yes, you're a girl, for purposes of this article). You get to Tango Tapas, a dark little lounge tucked into an alley near Cross Street Market but removed from the more raucous bars of Federal Hill. You like the chic vibe, the mellow music, the low banquettes lining the walls, the feeling of finding a small treasure. The restaurant is busy enough to feel fun, but not so crowded as to be a scene.

Babalu does it, and so does Red Coral. And starting tomorrow, another Baltimore restaurant will begin transforming itself into a nightclub on weekends. This time, it's Red Tapas, the new restaurant on the first floor of the multilevel Redwood Trust dance club. Red Tapas, owned by Jerry Edwards of Chef's Expressions catering, opens for dinner Wednesday through Sunday at 5 p.m. The latest time that reservations will be accepted is 9 p.m. At 10 p.m., the nightclub opens and the dancing begins.

Right after Christmas last year, my husband and I spent several days in Washington, D.C. One night we went to Jaleo, one of a trio of tapas restaurants of the same name in the area. From the moment our first tapa arrived, I was in heaven. Each little dish was a surprise and a gustatory delight. I loved the idea of sampling small portions of many dishes rather than large servings of only a few. Jose Andres, the chef at Jaleo, in his admirable book, Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America, defines tapas as "a way of eating, and a way of living."

It's only January and I'm already wondering if the tapas bar is going to be 2002's restaurant of the year. Recently, Red Maple opened at 930 N. Charles St., brought to you by some of the same folks who have the Good Love Bar in Canton. It serves Asian-influenced tapas in a chic New York industrial setting. The 16 items on the menu, ranging in price from $4 to $8, include seafood empanadas, tuna tartare and New York strip rosettes as well as Asian dishes. Red Maple (there's a maple tree in the courtyard in back)

It's an election year. So naturally, sales of ginger- and lemongrass-infused lobster spring rolls with avocado wasabi mousse are through the roof. The rubber-chicken circuit is giving way in Baltimore to something hip enough to sit on square plates: campaign tapas. Politicians and guava-glazed ribs alike are getting a good grilling at "Politics '06 at 6," a weekly forum Tuesday evenings at Eden's Lounge in Mount Vernon. Think Arbutus Roundtable, except for the chi-chi fare, the mostly black crowd and the live band that tunes up as the pols wind down.

I wouldn't open a restaurant in Harborplace unless it was a seafood restaurant or a Cheesecake Factory. Every tourist who calls me wants to know where to get the best crab cake (heck, everybody wants to know where to get the best crab cake) and as for the Cheesecake Factory -- well, the lines are self-explanatory. Luckily, everyone doesn't feel the way I do. Harborplace's newest restaurant is La Tasca, a handsome tapas bar with good food. It's part of an upscale chain based in England.

I've got to admit, I was a little nervous watching Neil Dundee, manager/resident cocktail connoisseur at Tapas Adela, assertively select, then chop, a full jalapeno - seeds and all - to make the restaurant's signature Hot Bourbon. Then, he threw them in the glass and crushed them - "to get the jalapeno juices out" he reassured me. "You need those juices and the seeds to bring out the sweetness of the bourbon. " Maybe it was his confident smile, maybe it was the lush bar décor, maybe it was the sultry Spanish music wafting through this Fells Point tapas spot, but something made me believe him, even for a non-bourbon drinker like me. Adela's Hot Bourbon is one smooth customer.

Restaurant Week Fatigue Syndrome?  I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it. But, at least, maybe, give the menus a look. Here's the menu at Tapas Adela in Fells Point. It's always interesting to see how tapas restaurants handle the fixed-price menu. I like what Adela has done here -- a group of four people will find plenty to choose from, but not too much. I don't really like when the entire menu is made available; it doesn't feel special. How about you? Would you do tapas for restaurant week?

The Freixenet Tastings & Tapas Truck rolls into town tonight and will stay here until Sunday. The truck will be showing up at partering clubs and restaurants. There wil be fun and games, samples of Spanish tapas, and tastes of Freixenet sparking wine. The truck will be "popping up" around town by day and making scheduled stops in the evening at partnering clubs and restaurants. Those stops include the Get Down in Fells Point tonight, 8-11 p.m., the Charles Street Friday Market tomorrow, 4-7 p.m., and Power Plant Live tomorrow (11 p.m.-2 a.m.)

The Freixenet Tastings & Tapas Truck is in town. I do like the idea of sparking wine on wheels, but the real reason for the post is so I can say that it's pronounced "fresh-e-net" By day, the truck will "pop up" around town, and by night it will make scheduled stops at participating restaurants and clubs. Those stops include the Get Down tonight, 8-11 p.m., the Charles Steet Friday Market , tomorrow 3-7 p.m., and Power Plant Live , tomorrow (11 p.m.-2 a.m.) and Saturday (8 p.m.-2 a.m.)

Opening a restaurant is no easy undertaking. Finding the right mix of food, decor and staff is hard enough, but making sure everything runs smoothly takes extreme focus. Te Amo , a new Spanish tapas restaurant and piano bar on O'Donnell Square in Canton, seems a bit preoccupied. Housed in the space that used to be Cosmopolitan, Te Amo is split into a downstairs bar area and an upstairs open dining room and piano bar. You can seat yourself on either floor. But the a lack of a hostess in the front or at the top of the stairs can make it confusing.

"Level, a small plates lounge" is the formal name of a terrific little restaurant in the heart of Annapolis. Open since October 2009, Level hasn't been exactly languishing in obscurity; multiple awards and commendations have come its way, and it's earned them. There are wonderful things to eat here: a Cuban pork spring roll that we ordered, ate like maniacs, and ordered again; handmade gnocchi in a plate-licking mustard-and-garlic sauce; a simple satay featuring grilled Gunpowder bison, served with an agave marinade.

To appreciate Red Tapas in the Redwood Trust fully, you have to rethink how you eat out. It works best if you remember that Redwood Trust is primarily a dance club, so its restaurant isn't a traditional restaurant. It's a place to get upscale appetizers and hors d'oeuvres. Food, in other words, isn't the primary objective here -- at least not after 10 p.m. Dancing the night away is, or drinking at the handsome bar. Mingling with the beautiful people. Enjoying the J-Lo bikini fashion show.

Sometimes the only way a restaurant can survive is to stop being a restaurant. That's what Eden's Lounge, the lively hot spot at Eager and Cathedral streets, has decided to do. Smart move. I didn't eat there when it first opened a year ago. It seemed to be a restaurant in flux, and I was waiting for it to settle down. At the time, Eden's Lounge had both a small-plates menu in the lounge and a fine-dining menu in the restaurant proper. It was the latter that worried me. History has shown that people no longer want fine dining at this location, and there have been many reincarnations of the old Eager House to prove it. Eden's Lounge is a place to drink, dance, listen to live music and eat the New American and Ethiopian versions of tapas, which is all the food that's offered now. The space is large, with a bar in front and three separate dining areas, each with a distinctly different feel.

Among the intriguing things about Pure Wine Café is that everyone there - from patrons to employees - seems to be enjoying the experience. This 32-seat wine and tapas place on Main Street in Ellicott City can charm you. The decor is simple and contemporary - bare-topped tables and black linen napkins with local art adorning the walls. There's live music some nights after 9 p.m. The place filled up over the couple of hours we lingered, attesting to the fact that this can be a late-night place for a glass of wine and a nosh.

Someone asked me recently if this was the year that the tapas trend was finally going to go away. In fact, it's not a trend anymore; it's the way many of us prefer to eat. Even with a restaurant like Tapas Teatro , which does so many things right, there are still some potential perils in a tapas-based evening. Food flies at you fast, and it's hard sometimes to keep pace. The table's real estate can get overpopulated, and you can start to feel as if the meal is slipping into anarchy.