By Michael Minorgan for Curtains Up minorgan@yahoo.ca
Tapas restaurants in Spain are national institutions frequented religiously by Spaniards on an almost daily basis. It has been said that there are over 2,000 of these fabled eateries in Barcelona alone!
Tapas are considered synonymous with Spanish cuisine and its tradition of eating small dishes of food as appetizers prior to engaging in the main meal of the day. It is not only uncommon, but actually highly recommended that one visits a selected few of these tapas bars before sitting down for dinner which is quite commonly served as late as 11pm or even midnight.
Tapas dishes, in one form or another, have been popular eating choices for Spaniards since their inception sometime during the roman invasions. They are always rustic in their choice of high quality fresh ingredients and in the simplicity of their preparations and they are more than often served casually on top of the bar in the clay ‘casuelas’ they were cooked in. Many Spanish tapas bars have, over the years, become famous for one particular tapas and people flock nightly to these bars for their specialties.
The custom of serving tapas in bars is to encourage people to share the food and stimulate conversation, very much resembling the similar customs with Chinese dim sum and the Middle Eastern mezze.
Over the past several years tapas or ‘tapas like’ bars have been springing up all over our city, all with varying degrees of success. I have certainly not been to all of them, but the ones I have eaten at barely resemble the true thing, either in food or ambiance. The tapas are almost always presented in a restaurant atmosphere where more attention is paid the artful presentation of the food rather than the ingredients and quantities used. These somewhat affected ‘nouveau cuisine’ imitations of the real thing do not cut it when you talk of authentic tapas and sadly, in some cases, restaurants feel they can charge you a bit extra for the privilege of tasting these dishes that quite often profer up very skimpy portions.
I recently visited one of these newcomers, Cielo Tapas on that three block strip of St Laurent blvd above Laurier that has become quite trendy with the foodie crowd boasting countless small cafes, restaurants and bistros lining both sides of the street.
I’m afraid Cielo Tapas is not one of the successes in my opinion. The atmosphere is a bit nondescript highlighted by some rather harsh neon lighting and a huge bar down one side of the restaurant. The front portion of the restaurant is quite pleasant with a few moon shaped banquettes and tables looking out through sliding windows onto the street.
The menu at Cielo Tapas lists about 30 tapas selections ranging in price from $5 to $16 ( Foie Gras and Scallops) It also includes several salads and soups and a small selection of main dishes priced between $19 and $29 (Filet Mignon).
We went to sample their tapas so we constructed our shared meal around these. We chose Grilled Octopus ($13), Snails in Garlic ($8), Grilled Vegetables ($8), Artichokes ($8) and Arancini ($8). We started our meal with their Seafood Soup ($11).
Let’s start at the beginning; the seafood soup was very disappointing, consisting as it was of a very thin and over salted fishy broth with an unappealing foggy sediment of crushed tomato at the bottom. It was buoyed with some very rubbery and in eatable over cooked calamari rings and tentacles, a few very small matane shrimp and three passable mussels completing the dish. Rather unappealing and charging $11 is way out of line… The Grilled Octopus was tender enough, but that wonderful charred flavoured usually associated with this dish was completely masked by a ‘gloopy’ gravy of balsamic vinegar and way too many salty capers completely dominating the dish. The snails, only six of them, were served out of their shells in a nondescript and runny sauce almost totally bereft of the advertised garlic. They were slightly gratineed, but lacking in flavour. The Grilled Vegetables were probably the most disappointing of all. For the $8 price tag what we received was one thin, limp piece of grilled zucchini, a small sliver of red pepper, one floret of limp and hardly grilled broccoli and three pathetically shriveled up miniature button mushrooms.The dish was swamped with an overpowering balsamic syrup reduction…not nice! I saved the best for last however, the only one good enough to apologize for those that had gone before, the Arancini. Three well made confections of this prized Sicilian specialty replete with a flavorful meaty filling and coated with the accustomed crisp fried exterior and served with a small pitcher of excellent fresh tomato sauce.
For dessert we chose a passable, if not inspired, homemade Tiramisu ($7) and a plate of six small Fried Gnocchi ($9) which were a bit ‘doughy’ and were served on a plate thickly painted with warmed Nutella., This was way over priced at $9.
We accompanied our meal with an excellent bottle of fruity and dry California wine, a Fume Blanc from Fetzer ($36) chosen from their very reasonably priced wine list.
Service throughout our meal was friendly and very professional. It’s a shame these very congenial servers don’t have better food to promote and serve.
Our total bill including tax, but not gratuity, came to $137
5329 bl St Laurent
Reservations: 514 277-7776
Hours: Tues to Thurs 5pm – 11pm
Fri 11.30am – 2pm 5pm – 11pm
Sat 5pm -11pm
Sun CLOSED
info@cielorestaurant.com
