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Café Ba Ba Reeba
Location:
Fashion Show mall. 258-1211.
Owner:
Rich Melman, Lettuce Entertain You.
Hours:
Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m., Sun.-Thurs.; until midnight Fri.-Sat.
Price:
Moderate: tapas, $2.95-$14.95, paellas and calderos, $8.95-$14.95.
Credit Cards:
All Major.
Reservations:
Recommended.
Ambience:
Casual but posh; dark and sexy inside, with echoes of Spain throughout, and a wide choice of indoor and outdoor seating options. |
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Tapas, savory bar foods generally eaten standing up, originated in Donostia, the Basque name for the city most of us know as San Sebastian. It is located on a sweeping bay in Spain's extreme north, and bar hopping and eating tapas is a passionate way of life there. But tapas didn't fare so well in this country until the concept was taken up by Rich Melman of Lettuce Entertain You, and chef Gabino Sotelino of Mon Ami Gabi, a Spaniard.
Melman may be America's most impressive restaurant entrepreneur. He is the creator of many concepts: Maggiano's Little Italy (a chain Melman sold years ago), Corner Bakery and, here in Vegas, Eiffel Tower. His Café Ba Ba Reeba in Chicago has been the most successful tapas restaurant in America for a decade. Now, he's taken it on the road to Fashion Show mall and added an important dimension to Vegas dining.
The new-and-improved Fashion Show has already added such swell new restaurants as RA Sushi Bar, Maggiano's Little Italy and Capital Grille, a posh steak house on the upper level. But Café Ba Ba Reeba, with a capacity of more than 300 people for indoor and outdoor seating, is the new anchor here. Perched directly across the street from the Wynn Las Vegas resort, you can count on this to be the hottest corner on the Strip by late spring.
This is a completely European cuisine, a product of Mediterranean and Basque influence. Spanish food is heavy on pork products, shellfish and rice, and any comparison to Mexico is misguided. Olives, sheep's milk cheese, ham from acorn-fed pigs, white anchovies and tomatoes are ingredients that sneak their way into many Spanish dishes, and the menu here has something for everyone.
This is a restaurant that manages to be casual and plush at the same time. As you approach Café Ba Ba Reeba, you hear the pulsating sounds of Spanish music emanating from within. Walking through the main door, you see a case filled with Spanish cheeses and a phalanx of whole Serrano hams suspended over them. A front bar area is wallpapered with bullfight posters and is properly dark, like Madrid bars tend to be.
The main dining area has dark wooden booths upholstered in blood red, and a shock of enormous, circular chandeliers that emit glowing yellow light and could be mistaken for an armada of descending spaceships. The kitchen is framed by a row of oversized iron paella pans hanging in front of it. There is also the option to sit outside, on a Strip-facing patio, but the atmosphere is neutral out there, and the feeling of being somewhere in Spain is lost.
The feeling definitely comes back when the food and drink arrive. The menu has a section devoted to sangria, Spanish wines laced with fresh fruit and served by the glass or pitcher. My favorite one is Black Raspberry (red wine with Chambord) but Peach (white-wine flavored with peach Schnapps) and Frozen Sangria (a red variant brimming with diced apple, lemon and orange) are winners, too.
The wine list here is also worthy of attention. Spain may be producing the best wines in the world, dollar for dollar, and this heavily Spanish list has several hard-to-find selections that are simply magnificent, such as the '03 Peitan Albariño, the best Spanish white wine varietal from Northwestern Spain ($32) and the towering red '02 Embriux ($72) from the Priorat, next to Barcelona.
Flip past the next page of the menu, devoted to paella (rice cooked on top of the stoves in an iron pan) and calderos (peasant casseroles cooked in cast-iron kettles) because they are heavier dishes you'll want to come back to.
The main section of the menu is a list of 62 cold and hot tapas, all indexed by number and mostly delicious. A few of the cold tapas took me by surprise. Salmón frío (citrus-cured salmon and cucumber bread) is cubed salmon redolent of cumin in almost sashimi-like chunks, and the flavors are so vivid that the dish eventually won me over. Spanish Caesar salad soars because of tiny bits of crispy Serrano ham and pungent Manchego cheese.
A garlic potato salad features soft potatoes and a wickedly garlicky mayo. At all costs, try jamón serrano. It is a delicious Serrano ham with tomato breadwhich actually is the Catalan dish called pan amb tomaquet, a Spanish bruschetta made with bread and tomatoes. If there is a dish here that I can't stop eating, it has to be this one.
Hot tapas display great range, and there are many that I'll order again and again. The fried Padrone peppers with coarse salt are wonderful. The peppers are thin, green and crunchy, bursting with flavor and perfectly salted.
Carnivores aren't slighted in the least. The braised lamb with couscous is my favorite dish on the entire menu. Chunks of lamb slow-cooked to a defiant bronze sit on top of fluffy Moroccan-style couscous, a staple made from semolina. The skewered chicken and chorizo sausage is another good choice, alternating chunks of spicy broiled meat that are crammed onto wooden skewers.
Not everything works. The ham and chicken croquettes are bland, and the tomato sauce under them further masks their flavors. Seabass in Romesco sauce is a nice piece of fish, but the red pepper sauce isn't a true Romesco, which is a sauce made with almonds or other nuts, and would have been an improvement.
Expecting authentic paella in a restaurant this eclectic might be too much to ask. Paella restaurants in Spain serve few side dishes, concentrating mainly on their specialty. Paellas at Café Ba Ba Reeba can be ordered in servings for two or four with a choice of main ingredient (chicken, pork, shrimp, lobster or mushroom). They are understandably toned down, as the broth the rice is steeped in doesn't have the same reduced intensity it would in the Spanish provinces.
Even if some of the menu loses a little in translation, most of it is sensational. Melman knows what he's doinghe has gone the tapas thing one better by including them as dessert. There is a tapas dessert menu where all desserts have the blowout price of $1.99 to encourage tables to order three or four. Most of them are big enough for about two bites: soft date nut bars, a moist lemon cake topped with lemon zest and a lemony yogurt, an almond sorbet and a rich three-milk chocolate cake, torta tres leches in Spanish.
A friend told me recently "I liked the food at Café Ba Ba Reeba better than what I ate on my trip to Spain." From the looks on the customers' faces, they do too. Spain is just plain hot, and soon, Café Ba Ba Reeba may be even hotter.
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