Happy Hour Tapas at Tinto
Garfield the cat may hate Monday, but it’s a great day at Tinto in West Hollywood.
That night, happy hour runs from 5 p.m., when the restaurant opens, to 10:30 p.m., when it closes. During that time, tapas are just $5 each. Normally, they’re $8 and up.
Tapas at Tinto aren’t ordinary bar food. They’re genuine Spanish tapas, because Tinto is a serious Spanish restaurant, run by the Sola family from Barcelona. The chef is Luis Perdon from Bilbao in the Basque country.
This means you’ll have to roll your tongue around such Basque names as txipirones (squid), definitely worth the effort because txipirones en su tinta is a delectable dish of tender squid stuffed with seafood and coated with squid ink sauce.
Tinto has a full menu, but the tapas are so intriguing, I would make a meal of those. For the main course, I would choose the txipirones and gambas al ajillo, large shrimp in a white wine and garlic sauce, accompanied by patatas bravas, which are delicious, tender, spicy fried potato cubes with aioli drizzled over the top.
The salad would be escalivada, cold roasted eggplant, bell pepper, tomatoes, onion and garlic--like ratatouille, seasoned with oil and sherry vinegar.
If I wanted dessert, I would order arroz con leche or flan from the main menu. The flan is light and very good. Perfumed with lemon and cinnamon, the arroz con leche (rice pudding) rises above most versions of this dessert.
Tinto, which replaces a gay bar, is totally Spanish, from the red kerchiefs around the necks of the servers to the tapas written on the mirror behind the bar, the way it is done in Spain.
Flamenco chill and flamenco pop play in the back ground. There’s bullfight paraphernalia on display. And an arched brick wall like you might see in an old town in Spain separates the bar and dining area.
That wall and the handsome floor to ceiling wine cage were designed by Juan Sola Sr., whose recipes are used for the red and white sangrias.
The long wine list amounts to a course in Spanish wines, divided according to place of origin and described as if a sommelier were talking. The list suggests food pairings too—Rueda white wines with patatas bravas, for example.
If you should miss Monday’s bargain happy hour, don’t worry. There are shorter happy hours (5 to 7 p.m.) Tuesday through Saturday. And Tuesday is paella night when, for $45, you can have paella for two (all seafood or seafood and chicken) and a big pitcher of one of Sola’s sangrias.
Tinto, 7511 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90046. Tel: (323) 512- 3095. The bar opens at 5 p.m. Dinner is 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, to midnight or later Thursday through Saturday. Closed Sunday.
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