Dining Review

Flan Brings True Tapas Dining to Downtown

Take your tastebuds on a Spanish adventure

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Providence’s tiny tapas restaurant, Flan Y Ajo, closed in July to move to a larger space around the corner, leaving a garlic-shaped hole in the heart of downtown. In November, the restaurant reopened simply as “Flan” in the space adjacent to its sister wine bar, Bodega Malasana. Though the miniature size had its advantages, like watching your padron peppers blister in the pan, the additional seating and in-house bathroom compensate.

Plenty of restaurants purport to serve “tapas,” but many just misuse the term as a trendy label for small plates. Not Flan. Except the occasional outlier, this menu is classic Spanish tapas, or more accurately, tapas and pintxos. A menu of small plates can fit any budget or appetite. You can have a snack to temper a glass of wine, or you can, like we did, bring friends and order almost everything on the menu.

We started from the top: Pan Con Tomate ($3), four pieces of a warm crusty loaf, rubbed with garlic and tomato, simple yet memorable. Tortilla Española ($3) is a Spanish staple, a thick omelette with potatoes served cold on bread. Boquerones ($4), one of our favorites, are pickled anchovies on crumbly crackers. If you usually avoid anchovies, don’t write this off: these are not the salty, shriveled pizza topping, but tangy, more like pickled herring. The cheese plate ($14) featured ample portions of three cheeses served with plenty of bread: Manchego, Brie and the wine-rinded Cabra al Vino. We also indulged in an order of Jamón Serrano ($10), thinly sliced dry-cured serrano ham that, as clichéd as it sounds, melts in your mouth.

Though not BYOB like its predecessor, Flan offers a mindfully chosen, affordable beverage selection. Those on a budget will appreciate the $20 wine bottles or the $5/glass house wine. We started with an Asturian Sidra on draft ($5/glass). If you haven’t tried traditional Spanish sidra, you’ll be surprised how dissimilar it is to sweet American cider, tart and almost a bit farmy. I’ll concede that it may not be everyone’s taste, but try it, it’s a great pairing for these dishes and you may begin to crave the flavor. Other sidras are available by the bottle or glass, as are some beers.

Patatas Bravas ($4) is another classic dish, perfectly fried cubes of potato drizzled with spicy aioli and skewered with toothpicks. The Pintxo Quimet ($7) featured slices of baguette spread with chevre and topped with cold smoked salmon, honey and capers. The honey and salty salmon was an unexpectedly pleasant combination. Our Setas Salteadas ($5), sauteed oyster mushrooms, was a little short on the mushrooms this time, but the abundance of garlicky olive oil with some bread for dipping made up for it. We giggled at the Frito Pie ($4), inserted like a wink halfway down the menu, and were not expecting it to hold its own alongside the classic dishes, but the dark chocolatey New Mexico-style chili was addictive. We continued with a bottle of wine, the 2012 Barcos de Piedra Tempranillo ($30/bottle, or $8/glass) from the Ribera del Duero region in central Spain, “pretty nice and smooth” as the menu promised.

And more dishes – the Kale and Garlic ($5), tenderly sauteed and sprinkled with flakes of ñora pepper, impressing even the kale skeptics at our table. The Mejillones en Escabeche ($8) was a treat for the eye and a good mixture of textures: raw slices of colorful radish, each topped with a marinated Maine mussel. The Merluza and Piquillo ($6), two bright red piquillo peppers stuffed with olive oil cured Andalusian mackerel, is one of my favorites. I imagine children in Spain might enjoy this as an after-school snack while their American counterparts are stuck with tuna-stuffed celery sticks.

After the meal, I was looking forward to a café bombón, a generous layer of condensed milk topped with a shot of espresso. The espresso machine was still decommissioned from the move, but I suppose this gives me one more treat to look forward to on my next visit.

If you, like me, were a longtime visitor of Flan Y Ajo, you might have worried that some of its charm would be lost in a new location. But owner Diego was still behind the counter prepping ingredients in his signature Batman hat, and the food is as good as ever, simple and authentic. It’s nice to see this little restaurant grow without losing its character.

Flan
186 Union Street
228-6775

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