44. Taberna del Alabardero
As I’m walking to dinner at Taberna (I’ve shortened the name to preserve my fingertips), I got a text from my friend and dinner date, Becca: “I’m here. This place is insane.” Oh Becca, I’ve seen insane. There’s no way an expense account restaurant like Taberna could be that crazy. Men in black suits and conservative ties would never have it! Oy, texts do not do this place justice. It is nutty on the inside. It’s a little like a Romanov palace meets the way hell is depicted on The Simpsons. Mayhaps that’s a bit harsh, but it’s the only thing I can think of. And dead on, in my opinion.
We thought the menu was going to be tapas-heavy but it actually was tapas-free. Our extensive pre-meal Googling failed us though, because we figured out that all the tapas was only served in the bar. (We think.) After doing away with our tapas dreams, the menu was overall pretty heavy. I was still in my post food poisoning funk so I wanted something light. I was definitely out of luck. Since us gals spent too much time gossiping and not enough time deciding what to eat, we froze up when the waiter came over and blurted out that we wanted the paella. Pork paella for two, very romantic.
Once our dinner came out, there was some superfluous tableside preparation complete with our waiter asking us how much we wanted, like a tuxedo-ed Jewish mother. It might have been because it was out of the cast iron dish by the time I got my hands on it, but there wasn’t that crunchy crust Food Network has taught me to look for in my paellas. Aside from that minor offense, I thought it was great. And the portion was huge, even for two people. Our Jewish mother/waiter came by to give us a second helping and though I pretended to protest, I obviously gobbled it up. I’ve had friends who ate there and ordered non-paella dishes weren’t too impressed, so I’m thrilled with our decision. My theory would be to go simple.
Aside from being decorated like a really, really classy brothel, we were also the youngest people there by approximately sixty years. There were a couple youngin’s at the bar, but for the most part it was us and large tables of awkward business dinners in the dining room. I probably won’t be running to eat there again any time soon—not a dig against the food, it just wasn’t my scene. But if I do have a hankerin’ for some not crunchy paella, I know where to go.
