Yum Tapas

Tonight we chose Jaleo for our girl's night dinner. http://jaleo.com/

Jaleo specializes in Spanish tapas and sangria... delectable little plates of goodness. There were five of us, Krystin, Laura, Shayla, me, and our new friend Kristen who I met through my brother. We had reservations for 7:30 for the Jaleo in Bethesda (there's also one in DC and one in Crystal City). The restaurant is right on the main street and we were able to score free parking in the lot one block up. Bethesda is beautiful and the restaurant was absolutely packed.

We ordered a pitcher of white sangria ($27), which was beautiful and delicious.. with floating pieces of mint and strawberries. We also ordered a carafe of Rioja ($18?), which was really only two glasses. We did end up getting a second carafe of the wine, and a pitcher of the red sangria ($22), both of which were excellent.

The menu is almost overwhelming with so many different choices for tapas, all that sound so good you want to order one of each... Since there were five of us we basically each picked 2, and also ordered the 2 specials the waiter rattled off as soon as they popped out of his mouth- fried swordfish bites and some rabbit dish.

Some of the dishes we ordered: Firm sheep’s milk cheese, slightly smoked with a rich nutty flavor (good, but not great); Endives with goat cheese, oranges and almonds (AMAZING, one of our favorites); Slightly spicy chorizo wrapped in a crispy potato (not my fave, but the girls liked it a lot); Sliced apples and fennel with Manchego cheese, walnuts and sherry dressing (great flavors, the super-thin apples slices and the cheese complemented each other very well); Gambas al aijillo, famous tapa of shrimp sautéed with garlic and guindilla pepper (the best part was soaking up the leftover sauce with our bread, very garlicy and flavorful); Piquillo peppers filled with goat cheese (This was actually our favorite, we ordered three plates of them!); Organic Tuscarora Farm mushrooms sautéed with garlic and herbs (yum, yum, yum); Sautéed spinach, pinenuts, raisins and apples (I loved this one, but not everyone did); Crabmeat with cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower and sherry dressing (good, not great.. the crabmeat was kind of bland and the cauliflower didn't really fit in); Prince Edward Island mussels steamed with a bay leaf and a pinch of salt (very good and actually a substantial portion as opposed to some of the chincier dishes); Seared scallops with a traditional sauce from the Canary Islands (two huge delicious scallops with a very light sauce, perfect); Quail stuffed with apples, pork, foie gras then wrapped in bacon (the tiny bird was adorable, but the dish didn't really come together that well, too much going on); Beef short ribs braised in red wine served with a potato purée (pretty good but not memorable, the ribs were pretty fatty); Chocolate and hazelnut mousse torte (the girl's liked it, but I thought it was kind of dry, very chocolatey); Basque cake with semolina cream, cinnamon-vanilla sauce & ice milk (unbelievably good, the best way to end the meal).

Ok, so maybe that was everything we ordered... yeah, it was quite a variety. We actually found that the vegetable dishes were our favorites, even though we're all card-carrying meat-lovers (Welcome back Laura). The service pretty good for the most part, very friendly, but we did have empty water glasses a little too long. In Tom's defense, the restaurant was packed and I'm sure everyone was incredibly busy.

For all of that food and alcohol, our check came to $62 per person once we added in a 20% tip. Not too bad for the great food and experience. Definitely recommend for a fun night out. The best part was that when we were all finished and walking outside, we all agreed that we felt happily full, but not overstuffed.

Cheers!