Txori – Foodie’s Review

Food type: San Sebastian style tapas (nearly everything is served on bread)

Menu: Non-shareable snacks and drinks most of the day

Location: Downtown in Belltown

Atmosphere: A bar which really isn’t, a back room with low tables, a front room with high tables, polished Scandinavian-looking chairs and a general relaxed pace; not too hip-I could take my parents here if they ate octopus

In attendance: I wasn’t paying much attention to the crowd-surprisingly though a lot of solo diners/drinkers

Service: Fair; have to flag waitresses down just like in Spain

Quality of ingredients: Good (anchovies-”good”; bread-”fairly good”; chorizo-”fairly poor”; duck confit-”fair”; octopus-”good”; blood sausage-”fairly good”; oxtail-”good”

Foodstuff eaten:

• Tortilla Espanola (onions, eggs, potatoes, and a squirt of garlic mayo) – “Good” – I liked this. Very simple. Slightly spongy.
• Gilda (anchovies, olives, pipparas, and piquillos–on bread of course) – “Fairly good” – This is a textbook example of the muddy, unrefined taste booby trap that much of traditional, rustic Spanish cuisine falls into if isn’t careful. And this isn’t careful. It’s clashing. To point out one failing of the dish, the flavorless piquillos show how even government controlled products can be wildly inconsistent.
• Chorizo con chocolate (chorizo, which was quite bland and metallic topped with shavings of dark chocolate of a decent quality) – “Poor” – My familiarity with Spanish food is certainly not encyclopedic, but I’ve never run across this combo–chocolate and olive oil, yes, but not this. And it didn’t work for me. Either it takes a dab hand to bring it into alignment or it’s a case of flavor animosity.
• Pan Tomaquet y Pernil (bread rubbed with garlic coated with squished tomato then topped with spanish ham) – “Good” – There seems to be a theme emerging here and that’s the realization that Txori does simple well. I liked it if isn’t obvious.
• Ensalada de Pato Confitado (a “salad” of duck confit, orange, and romaine) – “Fair” – This wasn’t horrible, but it suffered from weak execution of what is a classic pairing. Plus the confit was only mediocre but this is more attributed to mediocre duck than execution.
• Pulpo de Feira (Russet potatoes, octopus, ‘tear’ olive oil–how poetic!, and Spanish paprika) – “Good-great” – Same dish as at Harvest Vine but in a slightly smaller portion. This is actually much better than at Harvest Vine because this version was more aggressively seasoned (in a good way).
• Piquillo con Morcilla (Blood sausage with a piquillo pepper blanket) – “Fairly good” – I’ve had basically the same dish at Harvest Vine but for some inexplicable reason this was better. Perhaps less is more.
• Tartaleta de Rabo de Toro (Braised oxtail in a little tart with garnishs that I can’t remember) – “Good” – The oxtail was well-braised and tasted distinctively of oxtail. The rest of it was unmemorable, but who cares when eating good meat.
• Albondigas con salsa de Marsala (Pork? meatballs served in a Marsala gravy) – “Fairly poor” – This was probably the worst flavored dish of the night discounting the imprudent pairing of chorizo and chocolate. The gravy was fatty and lumpy and destroyed the meatballs which were actually fairly good.

Complaints: overstretched creativity, some poor execution, inconsistency of ingredients (lagrima oil, which is very good and the flavorless piquillos), only Gitana sherry, which is the Bud light of sherries

Plaudits: well-executed simple tapas, wide variety of Spanish wines, fills a neglected niche, good place to relax with a glass and some snacks

Cost: most individual tapas were under $4 dollars which is quite reasonable, but they also aren’t serving ventresca tuna or spider crab like in Spain. The shareable tapas, of which the meatballs were one, were upwards of $8-10. The drinks, of course, are a little pricier, but most wines by the glass for under $10.

Overall rating: 6.5/10

Recommended?: Yes for snacks and a drink

Visited: Spring 2008