28 November 2007

Tapas for Tenner in Wales.

Our lovely hosts at the Ty Rosa B&B in Cardiff suggested an all you can eat tapas place in the distillery section of downtown Cardiff. We arrived in the land of Dr. Who by train and ferry from Dublin, and by the time we rolled into our b&b, G and I were extremely hungry and ready for some good food and drink!

So Tapas for a Tenner at La Tasca in Cardiff. What a treat!

We sat down and the place is all themed out, but pleasant. Our delight escalated when we saw that there was sangria on the menu. Always a favorite! So we ordered a pitcher to share and made our selections. With the Tapas for a Tenner, you choose from a set list of tapas, and you eat all you want.

We started garlic bread because we were starving. It arrived before I had even taken out my camera! No photo!

The waitress encouraged us to order about 5 things each, and for all you can eat, why not oblige?! We ordered a whole whack of things, and the food started rolling in...

The first, er, second arrival was a lovely bowl of olives to accompany our tangy and very boozy sangria.




I think the camera was boozy, too, though G's hand firmly on her drink came in crystal clear.

From there came our paella. Yummy! We ordered one with shrimp (which I don't like) and one vegetarian. They were really good, but incredibly salty. Thinking it may just us, we said something in passing to our waitress who said, 'Oh yeah, I find it really salty, too!' Okayyyy.


Lovely all the same. And honestly, how cute are the little bowls? In the top left corner you can see a little bit of sausage... it was a bit of a meat platter, and tasty. Next came these amazing sauteed mushrooms. Really lightly seasoned, but perfectly cooked. I honestly could eat these mushrooms alllll day.


Oh no. The plates are starting to look empty! Wait until you see the next one... it was a lentil dish...and there's not much left of it by the time I stopped stuffing my face and picked up my camera...

If G were here, she could tell me the proper name, but noooo, she's out at some swishy work function while I am here on the couch watching the Packers/Cowboy game. No weird cable issues here, it's on regular cable in Canada...

Anyway! Our next dish was Potatoes cooked in a Tomato sauce. This was actually very simple, but really delicious...The sauce was really fresh, and the potatoes had crispish edges and really soggy centers from the sauce, which may sound gross to you, but for those of who dream about the delicious textures in food, this one hit the spot.



Seriously, it doesn't look good, but I assure you it was. TRUST ME!

Then came the tortilla...


Do you see how I tried to turn it around so it wouldn't look so much like I had already taken a big bite out of it??? Listen, I am only human. Between my excitement about being in the land of Dr. Who and Torchwood and the delicious food for a relatively reasonable price after the crazy expensiveness in Ireland, I was all over it.

So please excuse the missing albondigas. Yes, if there are meatballs on a menu, G and I have to snag them.


We ordered more of these (if you can imagine). Really tast in that lovely sauce. Hey, maybe this where that lentil dish came in, it kind of looks like there are lentils in that sauce. Who can say? You weren't there and I have the memory of a sieve. (Except for '80's movie lines. I am all over that.)

Then, we started to draw the meal to a close with amazing paella croquettes. Oh. My. Goodness.


See, brand spanking new. (It's because it's the second helping, and I was taking pictures to try and trick my stomach into wanting more food. It worked. We ate them.)

The next night, after a Dr. Who day of joy at the Doctor Who Experience or whatever it's called, G and I knew we had to have some local favourite Brains beer.


How cute is this overpass? (Is it an underpass if we are not on top of it?) Anyway, we knew we had to have it, and what better way to have Brains then with hamburgers and french fries. So off we went to this great looking restaurant we saw near the tapas place.

Boy it was a weird hamburger. I mean, really weird. (and I live in Canada, so I know from strange hamburgers!)


This one had a really nice tomato onion chutney on it, which was really nice. And it was a welsh rarebit burger, so you can see the cheesey beery goodness oozing out. But the patty....

THE PATTY!

It was so strange. It was really compact, much like the aforementioned Canadian hamburger. But this one was strangely crispy on the outside, providing a weird texture of crazy firmness with the sweet from the chutney and rarebit, down into this meaty patty, back out into goodness and bread.

Yeah, so I ate the whole thing. It wasn't that bad!

A few things about Cardiff... It rules. If you like the Doctor and Torchwood, you'll swoon. If you just love pretty cities, you'll swoon. I mean, look at these cute trashcan signs!


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