Taberna de Haro

Q: When is one tapas bar more Spanish than another?
A: When the tapas are more like sushi.

by Robert Nadeau

999 Beacon Street, Brookline (617) 277-8272 Open for lunch Mon-Fri, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., and for dinner Mon-Sat, 5:30-11:30 p.m. Closed Sun. Beer and wine AE, DC, MC, Visa Up slight bump from sidewalk level

Taberna de Haro makes a strong bid for the authentic feeling of tapas, which are properly Spanish bar food and thus truly best attuned to small, cold drinks of dry sherry. Although Spain certainly has lots of good red wine, and increasing amounts of fresh-tasting white, these salty snacks evolved in an era when the most dependable Spanish wines were fortified, aged in barrels, and consumed over long, long nights. Today many Spaniards eat something we'd call dinner, but they're apt to eat it around midnight. Tapas are designed to fill in the extended gap between lunch and dinner.

Authentic tapas are not really "small plates," as many of Boston's Mediterranean-oriented bistros would have them be. They are more intense than that, and less filling on their own. They are more like individual rounds of sushi, in spirit if not in appearance or flavor.

Taberna de Haro makes this point by refusing to package an American dinner. You could make one out of a meat platter, vegetable tapas, and something starchy. But all the dishes would be too highly seasoned. You would find yourself spacing out the bites with beer or wine or sherry. In the end, you would be singing in high-school Spanish, and the dinner idea would be put off.

The restaurant does serve larger dishes at lunch, but only two: a vegetarian paella ($6.95) and a mixed paella ($7.95). How does the kitchen avoid lazy-paella syndrome, in which some things are overdone while others aren't? By quickly steaming the seafood separately from the excellent short-grain rice, chicken, and beef. I've seldom had sweeter or more delicate shrimp, and never in paella. Likewise the clams, mussels, and squid rings. My paella also brought a side of potato salad with peas, carrots, a tuna-rich sauce, and a neat topping of shredded egg white.

At dinner, you have a wider choice: nine "pinchos" (two-person morsels, $3.50 to $5) and about twice as many "raciones," which provide, realistically, a bite or two for four people. Because the best items, such as the impeccable grilled asparagus ($5.50), are the saltiest, your only hope for filling up is something like the gambas al ajillo ($14) -- the gently steamed shrimp aren't that filling, but the garlic oil (with a little red pepper) gets you through a lot of the plain, crusty bread. I've made a supper that way in Spain, although I have to admit the bread there is denser and better.

Pollo en pepitoria ($10) also soaks bread well, with its rich garlic-almond sauce blanketing about four chicken legs. Not filling, but very satisfying, is escalibada ($7) -- a roasted and oiled salad of eggplant, peppers, and onions.

Some other top raciones are the "matrimonio" ($9.75), the metaphorical wedding being between the familiar brown anchovies and fresh, white fillets. The white anchovies are very tasty, but the platter is stolen by a couple dozen small, bitter green Catalan olives. Calimares fritos ($8.75), a mainstay in Spain, are even better here, with the squid as crispy as tempura; but the plate also had undercooked, greasy fried potato slices. Yes, two fry machines are needed here: one at a high temperature for potatoes and one at a lower temperature for the battered seafood. Albóndigas de bacalao ($9.50) are codfish balls and are fried right, with crispy outsides and melty insides.

At a certain point in the evening, I'd recommend the surtido de quesos ($9.75), a cheese platter with slices of five distinctive Spanish cheeses, which I would describe as "the crumbly creamy one," "the white sheep cheese, probably Manchego," "the creamy sharp one," "the soft mild nutty one" and "the crumbly bland nutty one." It would be at the point when you have moved from cold, dry sherries to room-temperature, sweet, older oloroso sherries.

Less impressive was a pincho of Spanish potato omelet ($3). This wedge was flavorfully topped with roasted green pepper, but the basic pie lacked egg and had an overstated earthy potato flavor. A coco de cebolla ($6.50) was no more than fried onions on crisp flatbread.

The list of drinks is weak on sodas, but alcoholic options include Spanish beer, red wines by the glass or by the bottle, and some nice whites likewise. For me, the real tapas drink is dry sherry, here served cool in the right kind of tall, small-bowled tulip glasses. The main sherries are those of Lustau, best known in Boston for "palo cortado" light olorosos, but offering a perfectly useful Jarana fino ($4.50) for drier tastes, and a fine manzanilla ($4.50) with a slight salty tang.

Of the desserts, the flan ($5) is unusually soft and creamy, and topped with apple compote -- like upside-down cake, but very refreshing. In "chocolate corruption" ($5.50), however, the con artists seem to have stolen the sugar and butter. It is a bitter and rather dry chocolate cake, despite a lump of hot frosting, but it will probably be more satisfying once the coffee machines are up and running.

Taberna de Haro gets a lot of points for beauty. Although Boston's other Spanish tapas bars have the crowded, hokey décor of Madrid's ancient taverns, this room has an airy, modern feeling while displaying appropriately the traditional brick oven (inherited from a previous pizza parlor) and copper vessels. There must be many places like this in the more fashionable quarters of Madrid today. Modern Spanish art and photographs of Madrid grace the yellow walls. Service is very good. The only thing I would suggest to the owners is a wider range of dry sherries.

It is interesting to contrast the tapas idea at Taberna del Haro with the structurally similar ideal of the sushi bar Ginza, across Beacon Street. One could hardly imagine two more different cuisines, yet both rise to complement a dry, alcoholic beverage (sake being the dry sherry of Japan) and serve ideally as bar snacks for an extended evening out.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.