Friday, April 22, 2005 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!

It's Hard to Top Tapas: The dish, as served at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, is finally being recognized for its versatility, flexibility and fun

Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! has a cozy, dark-wood interior that seems to contribute to the relaxed pace. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky

The tapa creator's identity has long been lost to the mists of time, but I sure am grateful to him or her.

Tapas -- also known as "the little dishes of Spain" -- were devised lo those many years ago as either a lagniappe or an enticement (depending on your viewpoint) served by bartenders in the Spanish countryside, particularly the Andalusian region. "Tapa" means "lid," and (again depending on your viewpoint, or which version of history you believe) either referred to the slices of food such as bread or Serrano ham placed atop wine glasses to keep the flies away, or to the foods themselves (such as olives, ham, Manchego cheese) that were served on plates used for the same purpose.

Why do I care about something born so long ago and far away? Because, while they've been slow to catch on in America, tapas are being recognized here for their versatility, flexibility -- and an element of fun. They're appearing as part of mainstream restaurant menus (usually as "small plates") and we now have in Las Vegas two dedicated tapas restaurants, the newest of which is Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! (The exclamation mark is theirs, not mine.) It's an outpost of Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You, whose other spots include the Eiffel Tower restaurant at Paris Las Vegas and the original Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! in their windy home city.

Why am I so crazy about tapas? Because they provide a unique ability to tailor a meal to my liking. They're also great for large parties because sharing of tapas usually is a foregone conclusion, and passing the plates and tasting what someone else found particularly appealing is fun and interesting. Get enough people and you can order everything on the menu -- a cornucopia of flavors and textures.

Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! offers paellas and calderos (braised meals in pots) in addition to tapas, and you can mix and match -- using the tapas as an appetizer, for example -- or stick to the little dishes, which is what we did.

The restaurant's tapas menu is laid out simply and divided into cold and hot dishes. We decided to taste six between us, and without even intending to, chose three from each side.

Some tapas restaurants serve the dishes whenever they appear from the kitchen -- seemingly at random -- but there appeared to be a plan in place here, with the cold tapas coming out first, followed by the one that was saladish in nature. As we waited, we munched crisp-crusted little slices of bread dipped in fruity Spanish olive oil, and sipped sangria ($19.95 per pitcher). The sangria's available in more than a half-dozen flavors; the red we chose was nicely dry and full of chunks of fresh fruit.

As for the tapas: I'll get to the loser first, because there was only one. The Spanish Caesar salad ($5.95) was about as uninteresting as it gets. It was topped with crispy-fried slices of Serrano ham and tossed with a few (precious few) crumbles of Manchego cheese, but the dressing was essentially flavorless, so the predominant flavor was plain lettuce. Nice, fresh, crisp lettuce, but plain (oh, so plain) lettuce nonetheless.

The best? Probably the beef tenderloin and blue cheese ($10.95), which was just amazing. We sort of expected this one to be pretty good because the marriage of beef and blue appeals to both of us, but it surpassed our expectations with the utter buttery-tenderness of the medium-rare beef and the truly amazing flavor of the thin blue-cheese crust, which was at no point overwhelmed by the flavor of the cheese. On the side was a pile of gaufrette-style potatoes, waffle-cut and fried crispy-thin.

In between were tapas that were all very good. We had to try to Tortilla Espanola ($5.95), probably the most well-known of tapas dishes, which is essentially a thick cake (or omelette) of potatoes, onions and eggs. It's sometimes served warm, but this cold version worked quite well.

Roast eggplant salad with goat cheese ($5.50) was as assertive as the Caesar was timid, thanks to a healthy dose of garlic. The eggplant was the perfect texture -- just soft enough without being mushy -- and the dabs of goat cheese that topped it provided both balance and contrast.

Nice balance and contrast, as well, in the sweet-and-salty, crisp-and-soft roast dates with bacon and apple vinaigrette ($5.95). And in the jalapeño shrimp ($8.95) a decidedly nontraditional tapa that was nonetheless delectable as sort of a cross between a stuffed shrimp and a jalapeño popper.

The tapas were all fairly large for the genre, but our well-above-average waitress told us the desserts were tiny, so we decided to share three ($1.99 each). Tiny they were -- just a couple of bites, which is nice when you only want a couple of bites. We had a rich flan with just enough caramelized sugar, a nicely flavored wedge of chocolate tres leches cake and an extremely fudgy (which is almost never a bad thing) truffle chocolate cake.

Three desserts at one sitting and we left feeling quite comfortable?

See, I told you there was a lot to like about this tapas thing.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are unannounced and done anonymously at Review-Journal expense.