New Place <i> Tapas</i> Into the Spanish Appetizer Craze

This is shaping up as a huge year for Spain, what with the country hosting three of the world’s major events: the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Expo ’92 in Seville and the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary. Bravo, Espana.

Spain is going to be a tough ticket this summer, but don’t despair. Instead, experience the gastronomic splendor of Iberia without actually leaving the area, at an exciting new restaurant in Newport Beach, Tapas Bar and Grill. Bravo, Orange County.

Tapas, as everyone must know by now, are bite-sized hors d’oeuvres perfect for grazing and socializing, and a form of eating close to a national obsession in Spain. My first encounter with tapas was a memorable one. The year was 1969, and the setting was San Sebastian, a Basque-dominated city on the French border.

I had wandered into a dark bar where a crowd of men were gathered three deep around some of the most appetizing dishes I had ever seen: green olives the size of a baby’s fist stuffed with salty anchovies, little fried sardines individually arranged on a white porcelain platter, whole shrimp still in the shell, plump mussels, oily pieces of fresh octopus, pungent cheeses, silken slices of rose-pink ham. I nibbled ecstatically for hours.

Janet Ingham and John Kulla (English- and Spanish-born, respectively) have re-created this magic at Tapas Bar and Grill. It’s an appropriately dark setting splashed with muted colors, located just behind John Wayne Airport.

Ingham lived for many years in Torremolinos on Spain’s Costa del Sol and is a real aficionado of Spanish culture. Kulla, who has an American father, learned to cook in his hometown of Seville. That’s actually where tapas are said to have originated, and a few of Kulla’s dishes are even tinged with the Moorish influences of Andalucia, his native province. Together, Ingham and Kulla make a great team.

Weekends are crowded at Tapas, largely due to the Spanish students from UCI and neighboring UC Riverside who have made the restaurant an unofficial social club. They are the ones you’ll find clustered around the L-shaped, blue- tile bar, doing most of the stand-up nibbling. Americanos are more likely to choose a table or booth. The booths are separated by wooden latticework and are romantically intimate.

Wherever you position yourself, though, you won’t escape the allure of the restaurant’s flamenco guitarist, or the smells of garlic and sherry wafting from the open kitchen. You can’t take your eyes off the tapas, either, lined up for display along the bar.

A slice of tortilla Espanola and a plateful of chef Kulla’s sensationally briny olives make for an addictive start. In Spain, a tortilla is a sort of omelet, chock-full of shredded potato, onion and garlic. This one is the real article, eaten cold in wedges, and it’s great. Ditto these olives, big green ones that the chef marinates himself before stuffing with a homemade anchovy puree. If this dish doesn’t make you thirsty for a sherry or a good Spanish red wine from the Rioja region, nothing will.

Mushrooms get the royal treatment here. The whole caps come in a rich, grainy broth loaded with garlic, bread crumbs and parsley, and are available both hot and cold. Someone could make a fortune marketing the dish called spicy fried potatoes Canaria (Canary Islands style). These are simply the world’s best potato chips, made to order and served hot, under a flurry of paprika, cayenne pepper and chopped parsley.

Now you’re on your way. Among the cold tapas, try the serrano ham and Manchego cheese plate. The ham and cheese are both made locally in the style of the salty mountain ham and hard sheep’s cheese (originally from the region of La Mancha) that you find in Spain. It may be true that this ham can’t hold a candle to real jamon serrano --a ham many consider the world’s finest-but it rates with most top-grade prosciuttos.

Or you might try a dish of Kulla’s marinated roasted peppers. They’re top grade, too, cut into bright red strips, marinated in white wine with fresh herbs and garlic. They come swimming in a pool of olive oil, and they are strangely addictive.

Hot tapas are prepared to order. (In Spain, most tapas are eaten cold.) “Shrimp in raincoats, Seville style,” aren’t too different from Japanese shrimp tempura (and not surprisingly--tempura was originally a Portuguese dish, and Portugal is right around the corner from Spain). In this case, the light, crisp batter is cut with a ruddy, tomato-based dipping sauce.

Fried fish--swordfish, salmon or snapper--are similarly dipped in batter and served in mouth-watering chunks on small plates. There are wonderful lamb meatballs in a rosemary sherry sauce, and small, spicy Moorish kebabs of skewered beef flavored with cumin and garlic. The chef goes to extreme northern Spain--well, France, actually--for his vegetable crepes. These are thick pancakes stuffed with a brunoise of carrot, red onion, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper, and they seem like the odd man out in these surroundings.

However, man--at least the North American variety--cannot live on tapas alone, as we can conclude from the recent closing of Los Angeles’ excellent Tasca. So Ingham and Kulla have hedged their bets by offering a dozen or so entrees and several desserts.

The entrees run to dishes such as chicken in pear sauce and pork with chorizo and orange peel, but the best of them is easily paella Andaluza, perhaps a bit pricey (at $16.95 for one, $25.95 for two) but worth it. It’s an iron skillet of saffron-infused rice, chock-full of fresh seafood such as clams, mussels, scallops, squid and shrimp, and easily the best version in these parts.

The best dessert? Crema Catalana , in a walkover. Think of this one as a kind of hot creme brulee where the sugar crust actually hardens as it cools. Other desserts, such as the leaden flan and the fruit-filled crepe, made with the same pancake used to house the vegetable mixture, don’t deserve to represent Spain in her year of glory, 1992.

Tapas Bar and Grill is moderately priced. Cold tapas are $2.25 to $6.95. Hot tapas are $2.95 to $5.95. Entrees are $7.95 to $25.95. Desserts are $2.25 to $4.50.

TAPAS BAR AND GRILL

4253 Martingale Way, Newport Beach.

(714) 756-8194.

Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday; dinner 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.