Tapas

I love the concept of tapas: you get to try several dishes at once. Even though Eclipse di Luna is a popular place for tapas (and late night dancing) in Atlanta, I didn't get to go there until recently. I met up with my friend Ems one last time before leaving for Cleveland. We started the night with some cocktails: I had the lychee martini, and Ems got the grapefruit martini. My drink was really good. It was slightly fruity, but because the lychee has a tart flavor, it didn't taste too cloying overall.

In an attempt to find crispy potatoes (patatas bravas) as good as the ones at Loca Luna, I was really excited to try the ones at Eclipse di Luna. (Side note: what's up with having the word "Luna" in both tapas places???) There are a couple of things that must be done right with the patatas bravas. First, they need to be CRISPY on the outside, but not drenched in oil while frying. Having some good seasoning on them is also nice to have. Second, the Romesco sauce on the side needs to be both creamy and spicy. Well, I'm happy to say that the patatas bravas at Eclipse di Luna perfectly satisfied both of these requirements! :) They were as good as the ones at Loca Luna that I love so much, and I couldn't find any difference.


The other two dishes we decided to try were the fried goat cheese with caramelized onions (seen above with the potatoes) and the pulpo salteado (octopus "hash"). The goat cheese was good, but not exceptional. I guess it's hard to change its potent taste into anything else. And the taste is the reason why I got it anyway. The octopus wasn't really hashed, but that's what it reminded me of. It came sauteed with potatoes, onions, capers, peppers and lemons. The octopus itself was cooked really well and was not chewy. The poptatoes were crispy and contrasted the soft peppers and onions. And the acidity from the lemon made the dish really pleasant to eat. In summary, it was delicious!

I can honestly say that I loved Eclipse di Luna. I think I might like it even more than Loca Luna. My only regret is that I didn't know how good it was until now, when I'm about to leave the city :(

Barcelona, Ole!

My roommate Snooki,
Being a smart cookie,
Passed her qualifying exam last week
Continuing on her way to become a science geek.
To celebrate, we went to Barcelona,
A place fit for her fancy persona.

Alright, alright I got carried away with the rhyming. And to clarify, neither Snooki, nor Barcelona are fancy or snobbish. But of the two, Barcelona comes closer, haha. But it was a special occasion, so we could go overboard a little bit.

Barcelona is a wine and tapas bar in the Inman Park area of Atlanta. Snooki and I walked by it one afternoon when they were making paella outside in a huge fan and made the decision to try it one day. It turns out that they don't serve individual portions of paella, but offer it only in large batches meant for sharing. We opted out for sharing the smaller and less expensive tapas instead. The menu wasn't as extensive as the one at Pura Vida, but we still had plenty of options to choose from. Everything sounded really delicious, but at the end we got the Patatas Bravas, Herbed Goat Cheese and Mushrooms and the Wild Striped Bass Ceviche.

Snooki and I have something of a quest to try as many patatas bravas from different places as possible. This obsession started at Loca Luna where we always get patatas bravas for an annual school dinner. The dish is simply amazing there! The potatoes are perfectly crispy and spicy. The aioli that they are served with also contributes a little spiciness, but the smooth creamy texture helps to balance out the heat. I've tried to make my own patatas bravas once, but failed miserably :( We also ordered them at Iberian Pig once. They were better than mine, but nowhere close to the ones at Loca Luna. Considering these failures, I was starting to think that we won't be able to find a place that serves patatas bravas as good as the ones at Loca Luna. Well, I'm happy to say that this has changed! The patatas bravas at Barcelona come very very close to the ones at Loca Luna! The crispiness and spiciness are definitely there. The only difference is in the sauce. The potatoes at Barcelona are served with a spicy aioli and ketchup. The aioli was ok, but the ketchup (which wasn't changed in any way) had no place on a great dish like the patatas bravas.

The herbed goat cheese and mushrooms also had a lot to live up to. I had had a dish of mushrooms sauteed with garlic and butter at Pura Vida in which the mushrooms were just perfect. I expected something similar from the dish in Barcelona, but was a little disappointed. The mushrooms tasted ok, but I wish there was a little more depth of flavor, maybe some garlic or herbs in the mushrooms rather than simply butter. Also, I thought that there would be a ball of goat cheese on the side to almost sere as a dip for the mushrooms. Instead, there was an amorphous dollop on top that didn't provide as much tangy-ness to the dish as I was hoping for.

Finally, the ceviche was great. I don't have much to say about it except that it was exactly what a ceviche should be: fresh-tasting and with large chunks of seafood. The citrus flavor was refreshing, but not overpowering. My only complaint is that there wasn't more of it ;)

At one point during the dinner we were pleasantly surprised by a complimentary dish of beets with walnuts and pesto. We still don't know why we received it, but we didn't turn it down... Even though Snooki doesn't like beets, we kept the dish. Of course, I ended up eating most of it, but Snooki at least gave it a try. The verdict: she still doesn't like beets. Well, I enjoyed the dish. I actually like the slightly sour taste of beets, and it went great with the blue cheese-based pesto on top.

It being a celebration, we also ordered drinks and dessert. Snooki is a big fan of sangria, so she tried the white wine one. Well, I can assure you she liked it very much and only two drinks were enough for her for the night. I tried the caipirinha. I was a little anxious when I saw that it came in a pretty small size (maybe 6 oz), but my mood completely changed only after a few sips. Man, this drink was strong! After only half a drink, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to drive home. Thankfully, the food and dessert soaked up the alcohol by the end of the night and we were able to get back home safely. By the way, even though the drink was strong, the caipirinha was easy to drink because of the refreshing lime taste.

As to the dessert, Snooki and I shared a chocolate hazelnut molten cake with coconut ice cream on top. The cake wasn't that great. I didn't taste much hazelnut in it either. However, the coconut ice cream was one of my favorite things. It reminded me a lot of coconut gelato I had had in Italy. I wish Barcelona sold it in cartons to take home ;)

By the way, Barcelona is also known for its wine list. Maybe we need to try some during a future visit :P

Noche Night

I've been meaning to go to Noche for a looong time, and I finally went there with Cashew once they offered a Scoutmob deal. We went there on a surprisingly busy Sunday night, but were able to get a table right away.

Despite the large number of delicious-sounding options on the menu, we pretty quickly settled on an all-seafood dinner. Our choices for the night were Fried lobster tail, Salt and pepper calamari, Steamed mussels in a lobster chili broth, Pan seared crab cake and the Spanish fried potatoes as the lone non-seafood item.

We were both starving by the time the food arrived, as can be seen by the lack of actual food in the picture. The calamari also had battered and fried jalapenos in them, the crab cake did have visible pieces of real crab and the broth from the mussels tasted like a soup. All good things! It might sound weird, but the broth was my favorite thing for the night.

Once our hunger was somewhat satisfied, I actually had time to take a picture of the food before annihilating it. Hmm, that might also be the reason why I considered these two dishes not as good as the previous ones. The lobster had so much batter on it, I couldn't even taste the meat. And the fries potatoes weren't crispy and had a strange vinegar aftertaste. The aioli they came with was just horrible. It wasn't even spicy. It doesn't come even close to the tomato sauce that the fried potatoes at Loca Luna come with. On the bright side, the apricot sauce that came with the lobster tail was pretty good, so I ended up using it for the potatoes as well.

After reflecting on the meal a little bit, Cashew and I realized that everything was fried. Yes, fried food usually tastes great, but for me, the true sign of a good chef is the ability to infuse taste into fresh food. Despite all of this, the Noche menu did contain a lot of other interesting dishes that I wouldn't mind trying on a second visit.

Still #1

After learning that I won a prestigious scholarship, I wanted to celebrate with Cashew. And what better place to go than our favorite restaurant in Atlanta? So it was time for our second visit to Pura Vida!

In the spirit of a real celebration, we started off the night with drinks. The caipirinha attracted my attention because it's made with limes and I love sour, lime-containing drinks. As expected, it was amazing. Cashew got the signature Pura Vida cocktail. The name skips my mind right now, but I think it was "Sex with Santiago." We had gotten a free sample from it after flirting with the bartender during our first visit there, so now she wanted the full version. Something you'd never guess from the menu or even by drinking it is that it contains a raw egg! Cashew and I know just because we're best buds with the bartender ;) The drink is great, not slimy at all. By the way, both drinks had just the right amount of alcohol.

For food, we wanted to further explore the exhaustive menu and try things we didn't get the first time. It was hard to pass some of our favorites, but we came up with five new options: Peruvian blue tilapia crudo, charred mushrooms, fall over chayote, mofongo con "carne frita," and chivo al vino en fufu. The tilapia was lightly cured and salty. I didn't mind the saltiness, and I don't think it was overwhelming. I think, despite being cured, the fish tasted really fresh. Just like some of the other dishes we got that night, it came with foam on top. After watching Food Network obsessively, I know that foam is actually really hard to make, and is one of the biggest trends in the food industry right now. I'm glad to see that Chef Santiago is up to date with what's cool in the culinary world :)

We got the charred mushrooms despite the fact that I didn't even like mushrooms up until a few months ago. Well, dishes like this one made me like them. The mushrooms seemed more like sauteed in butter than charred. Whatever the preparation method, they had an amazing taste and simply melted in your mouth. If all mushrooms tasted like that, I doubt I would have avoided them. [Note to Pumpkin: they taste like the mushrooms my mom made once.]

The reason we ordered the chayote was because we didn't know what half the ingredients were :P It was a chance to try something different. It is basically a salad made of a type of squash with tofu on the side, pepitas (pumpkin-like seeds), and calabaza puree (whatever calabaza is...). The dressing was umeboshi sauce (whatever umeboshi is...). The salad reminds of Vietnamese salads in style, but was a bit too sour. By the way, the tofu was cooked perfectly, and was much better than the famed tofu at Top Flr which was one of the 100 dishes to try in Atlanta.

Speaking of the 100 dishes to eat in Atlanta, the mofongo was on the list as well! I think mofongo is basically mashed up bananas that have been formed into balls and fried. Honestly, I don't remember much what they tasted like. I had really high hopes for this dish, but I was disappointed. The mofongo was unmemorable. On the bright side, it also had foam, and the pork was really really tender and flavorful.

Finally, the chivo dish was a type of giant dumpling. The Chef again showed off his creativity by fusing Italian (the polenta), French (slow-cooked meat in wine, here goat) and Asian (the dumpling) elements. Just like the pork before, the goat was perfectly cooked and was extremely tender. In case you've never had goat meat before, it tends to be tough and needs special preparations to tenderize it. I was very impressed with how it turned out in this dish.

So after trying 11 different dishes on two different occasions at Pura Vida, I'm glad to say that I still consider it the best restaurant in Atlanta. And the good news is, there are more items on the menu I need to try!

Tapas Time

After the fabulous time at Pura Vida, Cashew and I were excited to try more tapas. This time we headed to Iberian Pig in Decatur. The place has a great reputation, so we were very excited to see what it was all about. Well, the experience started off on a bad note when the hostess tried to seat us on a loft table in a room without any windows when we asked for a window table... We eventually sat outside. Thankfully, the rest of the staff was very friendly and polite. We even got a chance to chat with the owner for a few minutes!

But let me come back to the main point: the food. We had the Pork Cheek Tacos, Eggplant Fries, Arroz con Iberico, Pan con Tomate and Calamares. We chose those items after a long discussion with our waiter about his recommendations (the tacos) and what we wanted to try (almost everything else). We were also interested in the BBQ Octopus, but the waiter recommended against it because it supposed had a very briny taste. Now I wish we had tried it anyway. The pork cheek tacos that he suggested were good, but not amazing. I expected them to have a much fresher taste considering they had corn and lime juice. Instead, they felt kind of heavy.

One of the items on the menu we were most excited about were the eggplant fries. That seems like a really creative idea, right? On par with the avocado with chorizo chips at Pura Vida. I had very high expectations for those fries. They weren't met at all... The fries were just soggy and tasteless. There were maybe just a couple of bites when I could detect eggplant taste. Contributing to my disappointment, the fries came with aioli (i.e., mayo). When will restaurants get away from the aioli fad??? Tomato-based sauces are so much better! Even store-bought ketchup would have been better.

We ordered the rice (arroz) dish because it had the Iberian ham that the place is known for. Well, the dish was basically like a creamy Italian risotto. The ham was probably fried to get a bacon-like texture, but also lose its taste. Overall, there was nothing special in this dish.

The two dishes I kind of liked were the rustic bread and the stuffed whole calamari. Coincidentally, they both had some time of tomato sauce in them rather than creams... Get the hint, restaurants? The bread also had roasted garlic on top, so it had a very earthy flavor. It got soggy as the night went on (from the runny sauce), but I didn't mind it too much.

I saw a chef make stuffed whole calamari (well, with tentacles removed) on TV once, and I've wanted to try them since then. The ones at Iberian Pig were baked in a tomato sauce and covered with cheese. They had a slightly fishy taste, just how I like fish. So, I did like the dish, but it wasn't anything extraordinary or something I couldn't do at home.

Well, the food at Iberian Pig was by no means bad. It was all well-cooked and well-seasoned. But it wasn't anything special. I don't get what the hype is all about for this place when Pura Vida is so much better. Well, Iberian Pig is better than Pura Vida in one aspect: our check was much lower :P

Expensive, but delicious!

I love getting deals on good food, so I go to Scoutmob restaurants all the time. That's exactly what I thought I was doing last night when Cashew and I went to Pura Vida. It is a tapas restaurant in the Highlands, and it's owned by Chef Hector Santiago who appeared on Top Chef. I think this is the first Top Chef restaurant I have been to... I was prepared for really good food, but what we got completely blew away my mind!

But there will be more about that later. First, the only spoiler of the night was the check. As I said, Cashew and I thought we would get 50% off our dinner. However, as it turned out, a restaurant called Pure Taqueria had the deal, not Pura Vida... At the end we had to pay about $40 EACH!!! Good thing we both agreed this was the best food we had ever had, so we weren't very upset. And I mean it, the food at Pura Vida is probably the most creative and best tasting of anything I have ever tasted.

Enough of this, though, I need to get to what we ordered. I ordered a white wine sangria as my drink. It was pretty good. When I got to the bottom of it, I noticed that it had grapefruit. I hate grapefruit, but somehow I didn't notice its taste in the sangria :)

We shared 5 different tapas: (1) tuna poke, porque no?, (2) cangrejo "tater tots," (3) aguacate criollo, (4) tamales nejos, and (5) steamed coconut buns. First came the aguacate criollo, or avocado with chorizo chips. I couldn't stop my praises for the dish after the very first bite! It's so creative and innovative and delicious :) I need to learn how to make this myself!

Next we got the tuna poke. Not much to say about it except that the fish was soooo tender, it melted in your mouth. The tuna was covered with what looked like regular corn flakes, but oh well... One sub par ingredient wasn't enough to take away anything from this amazing dish.

The next dish we tried was the coconut buns. The buns themselves were very very soft and light and airy. I personally didn't taste any coconut flavor, but I still loved them. They were wrapped around a piece of pork belly. I am known to pick every piece of fat from my food because I don't like the texture of fat. Again, I was amazed at how well-prepared the pork belly at Pura Vida was. I could actually eat it by itself, without having any of the bun in the bite. So when a chef can transform fat into something delectable, you know you're at an amazing place.

The next dish was one of the tapas we were most excited - crab tater tots. The tater tots themselves were made of plantains, and they had pieces of real crab meat in them. The crab flavor was just strond enough to make it noticeable but not take away from the fried flavor and texture of the tater tots. By the way, I wouldn't have guessed they were made of plantains and not real potatoes. As everything else so far, they were delicious.

The final tapas dish was the tamales. They were also very tasty, and could be the best tasting thing at many restaurants. However, compared to the perfection of flavor in everything else we had had up to that point, they didn't quite measure up. The tamales themselves weren't very flavorful, but they went well dipped into the sauce that came with the plate.

Because everything was so impressive, we couldn't leave the restaurant without trying a dessert, too. Our first choice was the Latino chocolate tart. Unfortunately, they were out of it. So, we had to "settle" for the chocolate creme brulee. I don't know how good the tart could have been, but the creme brulee was our of this world. It was so dense and rich, it felt like chocolate pudding. However, it had the nice brulee crust on the top that's so much fun to dig into :) One slight negative with this dessert was the amount of powdered sugar on top. Both Cashew and I started coughing at our first bites. However, once we got to the Kahlua on the bottom, we had forgotten we had any complaints about the dessert.

In summary, I don't remember the last time I loved anything I ate so much. I did enjoy the food in places like Two Urban Licks and Rathbun's, but i don't think it can measure up to the culinary excellence we experienced in Pura Vida. Pura Vida is hands down my favorite place in Atlanta so far, and I am definitely going back there despite the hefty price :)