{"id":16,"date":"2007-04-12T17:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-12T21:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2007-04-12T17:23:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-12T21:23:00","slug":"tapas-at-toro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/12\/tapas-at-toro\/","title":{"rendered":"Tapas at Toro."},"content":{"rendered":"

So I kind of got dragged to the South End, which might as well be the other end of the earth for me, last week by a couple of friends, one of whom was on furlough (his wife and one-year-old son were on a plane back from California at the time). The destination was Toro, a be-seen tapas bar created by Ken Oringer, the chef behind Clio and Uni in Back Bay – in other words, a really famous chef around these parts.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the food at Toro was impressive. The best dish, one that Ming Tsai raved about in a review I found after we ate at the restaurant, was a grilled maize dish. The cobs are seared to the point where the outside of the kernels is starting to blacken, after which it’s rolled in a garlic-mayo (tasted like butter was in there too) and topped with a crumbling of cotija cheese, which I didn’t even know I liked. Other hits included the shrimp in a mildly spicy butter sauce, a braised short rib served in a tiny cast-iron skillet, bacalao croquettes (a little soft inside, but not fishy, with a perfectly fried exterior) with a ring of deep-fried lemon rind, and boquerones (marinated fresh anchovies).<\/p>\n

There were a couple of misses, of course. The skirt steak was bland and a bit undercooked (we asked for medium, it was still mooing when it reached the table). The pimientos de padron<\/em> were very bitter, which was a big disappointment because it was my first time trying them after reading about them in Calvin Trillin’s Feeding a Yen<\/a>\"\"<\/em>. The pan con tomate was fine, but it was just bruschetta with a Spanish name, nothing I couldn’t have in any decent Italian restaurant (not that we have that around here).<\/p>\n

I’m told the wine list at Toro is solid, for what that’s worth, but since I drove downtown I didn’t partake.<\/p>\n

I left not hungry, but not exactly full, for $30 or so, which doesn’t strike me as a great bargain, but is typical of my experiences at tapas places. I’m not a huge eater, but the tiny little plates never seem to add up to a full meal. So if you like tapas or want to go to a restaurant with a scene, Toro’s worth the trip, since the food itself is good. I just like a little more bang for my buck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I kind of got dragged to the South End, which might as well be the other end of the earth for me, last week by a couple of friends, one of whom was on furlough (his wife and one-year-old son were on a plane back from California at the time). The destination was Toro, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}