At Rincón Escondido, a tiny tapas restaurant in Edgewater with cramped wooden tables and hanging pots and pans, things can get weird.
When you visit a tapas restaurant and the menu lists $10 tortilla de chorizo, $7 croquetas de bacalao, and $7 montaditos de boquerones, you might order three tapas per person, because most high-quality small-plates spots charge $7 for three croquetas. We are all familiar with this proportion of price to deep-fried goodness.
But then you go to places like Rincón Escondido and order five tapas for two people and end up with so much food that you must drag over a nearby empty table just to accommodate all the plates. And you end up paying $50 for lunch with enough food to feed four people.
Unusual? Yes. More extraordinary is this: Rincón Escondido's food is also pretty good.
At the restaurant, there's only one waiter and one cook. Sit in the narrow dining room and order your meal. Then -- ding! -- a bell rings. Tapas are carried all of three steps from kitchen to table. Indeed, Rincón Escondido is a tiny place.
The croquetas de bacalao ($7), deep-fried and blasting-hot rolls, tuck codfish bits beneath a golden breadcrumb coating. Each order brings six.
There's a choice of montadito de boquerones ($7) or montaditos de morcilla. The salty anchovies are layered atop sliced baguette and topped with chopped tomatoes and a dash of olive oil. There were six of these too.
The tortilla de chorizo ($10) pairs a thick chorizo omelet with a pungent aioli, which had too much garlic. Still, it's an enjoyable tortilla, one that benefits from the peerless combination that is egg and pork.
Pulpo a la gallega mingles octopus, doused in paprika and olive oil, with sliced boiled potatoes.
At Rincón Escondido, there are also larger plates and lunch specials such as chicken in garlic sauce ($10), pork loin with onions ($10), red snapper ($12), and ensalada al Rincón ($8) -- mixed greens, tomatoes, mozzarella, pesto, and peppers.
There's sangria and several bottles of red and white. Mostly, though, at this little tapas restaurant, there are simply many deals.
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