Tapas: Ur Doin It Wrong

In the general vein of trying activities other than drinking, Beau and I went ventured into the city on Saturday to meet one of his friends for dinner at Bar Lola, a trendy tapas restaurant in Back Bay. For those living under a rock, “tapas” is a Spanish word roughly translating to “shnacks” or “nachos during happy hour” but much fancier. Much fancier. And much more pretentious.

What should been a 30-minute car ride turned into an hour long ride because half of downtown Boston was already closed for Monday’s marathon. Could someone explain this to me? Is it because I’m from Jersey? 20,000-some-odd people gather together in a herd and … run? All day? For no prize? With no bulls or zombies chasing them? I’ve come to terms with joggers (solitary or in small packs of a dozen or so), but I’m not alright with several thousand people shutting down the streets on what would otherwise have been a perfectly good shopping day. Get a treadmill. But I digress.

Beau dropped me off out front to before parking the car and instructed me to find his friend at the bar area. Immediately, I was aware this place was bad news bears – the dim lighting, the size 2 girls, the hand bags worth a small fortune. When I couldn’t find her, I stopped by the front desk to ask the host if she’d checked in. I waited for several minutes until a frantic looking young gentleman ran by and stopped long enough to tell me yes, she had checked in; no, he didn’t know where she was; no, I couldn’t have a table until my entire party arrived.

I understand table-withholding when a place is packed and/or you don’t have a reservation but neither applied. Actually, it appeared our reservation was totally unnecessary considering how empty the place was. I’m still not sure why the host was hysterically running around and seemed too busy to pay attention to me, a paying customer. Perhaps he was training for the marathon.

Beau sauntered in with his friend in tow a few moments later but by then it was too late. Bad first impressions are hard to shake. The host agreed to seat us after I flagged him down from his frenzied scurrying. We were given a table about the size of a night stand and handed one pint glass ¾ full of warm tap water.

A waitress appeared moments later (granted with more water) to take our drink order which turned out to be mojitos and sangria. The sangria arrived but we were told the bar had no mint. Nope, no mojitos available in this Spanish sham. At which time I said “Fuck it” and got a rumndietcoke.

When it came time to order, we each put in for 3 dishes knowing full well that each one would be itsy-bitsy. As previously mentioned, tapas are really more of a light meal meant to eaten in early evening because the Spanish eat a full dinner around 9 or 10. If you’re going to make tapas into an actual meal instead of a snack, you need to order quite a few.

What we didn’t expect was to have the wait staff act so incredibly disdainful and offended that we would dare order so much. They seemed truly irritated each time they stopped by with a different dish. We even caught a couple of snide remarks. Ew. Don't judge me!

Again, if it had been a particularly busy night, I would be more understanding of there grumpiness and complete inability to smile, but considering the place was near empty, my sympathy runs low. The dates wrapped in bacon were divine, but the attitudes were such a turn off, I don’t think I would ever go back.

Note to wait staff at Bar Lola: Life is short and your dishes are small. Dislodge the tapa from your rectum and attempt to enjoy yourself.