Given the narrow confines of Tinto's back dining room, its mirrored walls traced with the wooden grid of a wine rack, its crowded tall tables pressed up against the hot glass wall separating the room from the bustling open kitchen, that was a lot of passion to witness in such a little space.
So, I decided to order what they had.
Even short of that trip to Paris, I had to restrain the urge to leap up from my chair. "Wow!" was the word most commonly uttered between bites over the course of my meals, from that first flaky taste of the complimentary phyllo tubes infused with Mahon cheese that came with smoked tomato cream dip to the last sugar-rolled cube of jellied Txakolina wine.
I even learned to say "Wow!" in the Basque language of Euskera - "Kontxo!" - in homage to the region of northern Spain and southwest France that has so inspired Tinto's chef and owner, Jose Garces.
Garces, the startlingly talented young culi-visionary behind Old City's Andalusian tapas temple Amada, traveled last year through the pinxto bars of San Sebastien. And he basked in those little plates (pinxtos are similar to southern Spain's tapas) resplendent with seafood from the Bay of Biscay, crimson dustings of espelette pepper, tangy sheep's-milk cheeses from the Pyrenees - and washed them down with hard cider or a good glass of red "tinto."
What has emerged atop the rustic wooden tall tables at his new wine bar north of Rittenhouse Square is a parade of exquisite inspirations - skewered on bamboo sticks, sandwiched between tiny baguettes, roasting in tiny iron crocks, and rising upward from narrow shot-glass flutes. They do not reflect textbook Basque cooking, per se, but are a taste of Garces in his finest vintage. Like those at El Vez and Amada, this menu draws inspiration from authentic flavors, then translates them into contemporary American ideas. And the results are more intricate and refined and magnetic than at either of the 34-year-old's earlier venues.
