Tour Ibiza! from Mallorca on Vimeo.
My new favorite app on my iPhone is OpenTable. It not only gives you restaurants in your area, their menus, and reviews. But it can get you a reservation with a click of a button.
I thought this week I would try something less expensive so I stumbled upon Ibiza in the South Side. The prices were reasonable ($7-$12 for a tapas plate). I would much rather have a bunch of small things to sample than one large dish, so I thought this would be right up my alley.
Our reservation was for 8:15 and we arrived right about that time. We were told it would be a little wait because the table wasn’t ready. And they suggested having a drink at the bar. Looking back, I think this might be a technique to get you even more hungry. Four drinks later and $40 poorer, I wanted to try everything that we saw being made in the kitchen behind us. Everything looked so good. We exclaimed “What’s that!” as dish after dish paraded past us.
I got a little impatient waiting for the table to be ready, and finally asked if it was. I am guessing the hostess forgot about us because we were immediately shown to a table by the front window. (I asked to be seated outside, but was told there was a private party going on.) Now the fun began. What to choose? There were so many interesting things to try. We finally narrowed it down to the spicy calamari, a special shrimp in chili sauce, Portuguese clams, and stuffed banana peppers.
I also wanted to try one of the wine flights. I went for the Spanish reds. The wines were pretty good; the presentation was not. I am used to a wine flight coming with a placemat telling you which wine is which or at least the waiter telling you this one is such a such. Our waiter placed down 4 glasses of wine saying, “This is the first one. This is the second one. This is the third one. And this is the last one.” Come on. I think a child in elementary school could have done as well. By the time the wine had arrived, I completely forgot which ones there were. I think he did also. Other than that, the waiter actually was very good.
The food arrived quickly. My favorites were the calamari. The dipping sauce was incredible. I am guessing it was a sauce made from a dried pepper. And the special shrimp with chili sauce was so good we had to order it again! The clams, while tasty, were on the small side and not much clam meat. The stuffed banana peppers were also good but could have uses a little more stuffing.
Still hungry, we wanted more. So we ordered another round of the special shrimp and also the Spanish sausage with potatoes. For someone who likes salty food, the sausage was a little too salty even for me and the potatoes really had no seasoning. Maybe they salted the sausage and not the potatoes?
Dessert was also good. It began with a very nice coffee. And had I known the coffee was free, I would have had at least another cup or two! I had a fruit tart that was very tasty. The crust seemed a little hard to me however. Min had the Portuguese custard which he said was a little over cooked. It looked good to me!
We are actually thinking about going back soon to try the other things on the menu that we didn’t get to taste. So I guess that’s a good thing.
