There are plenty of restaurants where they use the word “tapas,” but until now Bangkok lacked anything resembling the tapas bars of Spain. Though the experience isn’t exactly like what you’ll find in Barcelona, Tapas Café has filled a much-needed void in the local dining scene, offering authentic Spanish cuisine, along with wines and sherries, in a comfortable and lively setting. There’s a display case in the front, but Tapas Café is different from its traditional European cousins in that the food here is a la carte and cooked to order as opposed to being laid out for buffet-style grazing. The young chef, however, is from Spain, and he’s done an admirable job of adjusting to local ingredients while keeping standards relatively high. Sometimes the local produce lets him down—bland Thai tomatoes being the more obvious example—but the dishes are always freshly made and served at the right temperature. In addition to the high sodium content of the food (which encourages you to drink more pitchers of sangria, B175-600, than you probably should), another small criticism of Tapas Café is that the prices might seem on the high side by Bangkok standards considering the small portions. (Most dishes are around B150, but if you’re hungry, you could easily finish four or five.) But this hasn’t hurt business. Only six months since its soft opening, the restaurant attracts a regular and mixed clientele of mostly farang expats plus a fair number of Thais and Japanese. Thursday and Friday nights are especially busy, and it’s not uncommon to find all of the downstairs tables occupied in the shophouse-wide eatery. A good way to start is with a mixed platter of imported Spanish meats, which includes two kinds of sausage made from black Iberian pig; it’s well worth the B395 price and always seems like more than the official “100g” portion size. Most customers seem partial to sangria; another option if you’re in a small group is a bottle of easy-drinking Mendez sherry (B1,150). Another must-try dish, if it’s on the always-changing menu, contains a creamy goat cheese and both 3-month-old and 6-month-old Manchego cheese (B225)—delicious as well as educational. The food at Tapas Cafe is designed to be consumed with alcohol (or is it the other way around?), so expect bold flavors: super-salty and garlicky prawns (B130); juicy meatballs in a rich sauce thick with onions (B150); or slices of bread topped with eggplant “caviar” and goat cheese (B90). Slightly more subtle are lightly breaded fried squid (B105); scallops topped with a “salsa” of crunchy Iberico ham, onion, pepper, oil and vinegar (B150); or marinated octopus and potatoes (B350), a house specialty. Corkage: B400.