Welcome to Spain Here We Come!
Living In Spain Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
You may also listen to this article by using the following controls.
Miami tasty take on Spanish tapas
from: Maricel E Presilla
The tapas bars of my '70s student days in Valladolid, Spain, were boisterous places littered with peanut shells and paper napkins. My husband and I would elbow our way to the counter for a couple of slices of serrano ham or some octopus with a glass of house wine, then move on to another bar, and another, before going home to a simple supper.
Back in New York, I missed ''tapas hopping,'' and jumped at the opportunity to apprentice at this country's first tapas bar, The Ballroom, in 1983 with my friend Montse Guillén, a renown Catalan chef, and the Peruvian chef-owner, Felipe Rojas Lombardi.
A bar at one side of the dining room groaned with the weight of lovingly prepared foods: whole suckling pig, snails with red kidney beans, pigs' ears in escabeche, octopus salad. It was not, in true Spanish-style, a hit-and-run preamble to dinner, but rather an elegant place made for lingering over little dishes and carefully selected wines.
The Ballroom and its counterpart, Montse's El Internacional, generated an enormous amount of press in New York, and in 1985, Penelope Casas wrote a well-received cookbook on tapas. I was sure the concept was poised to take the United States by storm.
To my surprise, it lay dormant until the late 1990s, when it reawakened with vigor, particularly in Miami, which is home to some of the most resourceful interpretations of the tapas theme I have encountered.
Many Miami tapas places are wine shops, delis or a combination of the two, where the food helps the wine sales and vice versa. Surprisingly, they often have no kitchens, relying on freshly made sandwiches and canned or frozen tapas. (The quality of these Spanish imports is so high that customers are seldom the wiser.)
That's how Xixón started out. The owner, Begoña Tuyo, was born in Asturias, Spain, and lived in Caracas before coming to Miami to study finance and work in banking. Needing a change and missing beloved Spanish foods, she opened her little deli-wine shop in 2001. When I met Begoña last year, she was relocating to a bigger but still cozy space with a kitchen.
The new Xixón has a small wine department with a few wine barrels as tables and a deli section that sells cheeses, cured meats and Spanish grocery items. There is a bar counter with prepared tapas like wonderful meatballs, and a dining area that is full at all times. The place is popular with Spaniards and Latins of all nationalities.
The menu is a combination of little dishes like thin Basque sausages (chistorras) sautéed with white wine, fried chickpeas (garbanzos fritos), croquettes, empanadas stuffed with salt cod or tuna, chorizo or tuna in cider in the style of Asturias, sandwiches (bocadillos) and daily specials that include braised rabbit on Wednesday and black rice (arroz negro) on Thursday.
As before, some of the items come frozen from Spain, but many more -- from the succulent tortilla and tender, Galician-style octopus with paprika to desserts like nougat ice cream (helado de turrón) and wonderful French toast (torrijas) -- are cooked in Xixón's kitchen.
Still, I am partial to the sandwiches. Made on Spanish breads (imported frozen), they are filled with top-quality ingredients: perfectly cured serrano ham, Manchego cheese, Cantimpalo chorizo, piquillo peppers and the exceptional Spanish white tuna, bonito del norte.
I admire the ingenious Miami take on tapas and the way Xixón has grown into a wonderful little emporium. I can't imagine a greater pleasure than enjoying delicious little dishes and sandwiches in the same place where I can buy my favorite Spanish wines and groceries.
Culinary historian Maricel E. Presilla is the chef/co-owner of Cucharamama and Zafra in Hoboken, N.J. Her latest book is The New Taste of Chocolate.
Living In Spain News