Twisted Tapas Belmar - Meh...

Not that anything was bad, but … nothing was really good either.

This place on Main St in Belmar has an interesting and varied menu of small plates. The inside is comfortable and there is lots of seating outside in a nice courtyard area. It is BYO.

The menu is divided up into sections based on the origins of the dishes. We had cajun bbq wings and beer cheese fries from the American section, thinking both sounded really good. Except the fries could have been much crispier to stand up to the beer cheese, which could have been more cheesy ( if that makes sense). The wings were very dry, smoked not fried, but not moist and tender like the smoked wings from Surf bbq, but the sauce was decent, if a tad too sweet, especially for CAJUN bbq.

We had a flatbread special with artichokes and goat cheese and found the flatbread not at all flat. They should call this focaccia and they also should mention that the toppings were added after they cooked the focaccia hence were cold on the warm bread. Another meh. We also had a dish of scallops from the Spanish section described as having a green sauce, which turned out to be salsa verde and did not go well with the scallops at all. They should have made an herb and garlic sauce like we had in Spain, or maybe just a good EVOO and some fresh herbs.

From the Asian section we had tuna tartare, which again was not bad, but just not very good. It was a fair sized portion of raw tuna, not toro or anything but we weren’t expecting that. This may be the first time I can recall getting this dish anywhere where we didn’t finish it.

Most dishes were in the $12 range so we ended up paying $72 after tip and left thinking it just wasn’t worth it. Has anyone else been? I was wondering if it was an off night or is this mediocrity their norm.

Thanks for your review, which just makes me wish even more that we had a real Spanish style tapas bar in our area.

Some place with jamon, anchovies, machengo cheese cubes, chorizo, those tasty tasty little green olives, croquettas, pickled octopus, and/or garlic prawns in an endless parade of small delishus dishes.

It seems these are like the Italian coffee bar, an idea that succeeds in situ, but does not transplant well.

It’s too bad, because I love those kinds of places.

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Viking-
This is my dream. A small Spanish tapas place with a nice list of regional wines by the glass, maybe even on tap…someday!!!

The website sux, but the tapas are good and the sangria as well and it’s fairly close in New Brunswick

http://barcacity.com/

Thanks for taking one for the team, @seal! Something about a place offering too many cuisines + the fact that an employee signed up for CH to assure us that everything is fresh just turned me off. I had actually forgotten about the place until I drove through Belmar yesterday!

You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody drinking sangria in a tapas bar. It’s usually very small glasses of house red or white.

Also I remember tapas as really inexpensive in Spain, like maybe 3-4 Euros a plate, and some going for 2 euros and under.

They are like cheap bar snacks designed to get you to drink more, the Spanish equivalent of salty nuts. I think the average tapas place in Spain makes most of its money off drinks.

Some places specialize in different kinds of tapas, so the people I have been with in Spain will drag you to maybe 3-4 places to try this here, or that there. So if you are not careful it is really easy to get absolutely HAMMERED !