Escape to España

Benson, the quirky former city within a city, always seems more exotic and metropolitan to me when I step inside España — the tapas, paella and sangria spot that opened on the neighborhood's main drag in 2003.

What's not to love about:

Red carpet rolled out to greet you. Stamped-tin ceilings the olive color of copper patina. Tables and windows dressed in red.

Guitar music, sometimes live from a tiny stage at the back of the deep, narrow room. Large abstract paintings and a few giant photos of the founder's mom and uncle.

Candles flickering inside crystals of Himalayan rock salt.

Recent visits reminded me how much I also love the food.

Octopus, snails, anchovies, salted cod, rabbit — proteins seldom seen at other Omaha restaurants — populate the tapas and paella menus without apology. Pickled garlic, Marcona almonds and house-marinated olives are bold enough to be served solo. And, whether exposed or elaborately dressed, the ingredients all seem to flash with Spanish soul.

In the past, high prices for small plates and somewhat aloof service kept me at bay. I often left feeling broke and a little hungry.

A pitcher of the house-marinated sangria and a sampling of the 55 hot and cold tapas — the little dishes served on stacked racks for $4 to $16 each — can still add up. But, on visits in September, the final tally seemed to be a better deal.

This slightly older, wiser España, under new ownership since spring, offered a warm welcome, a table ready at the reserved hour, lower sangria prices, slightly larger portions on most tapas, helpful wine-pairing suggestions and a new ordering recommendation from convivial and attentive servers: two or three tapas per person, instead of four or five.

It also gave me a new request for my last meal: A smoky paella a la tierra, please, and a glass of the 2005 Viña Sastre (more on that later).

At España, paellas take about 40 minutes to prepare. They're served family-style for two or more, straight out of shallow slope-sided pans. The menu doesn't mention that the paellas are generous (the minimum two-person order can reasonably feed four), that they're served with salad and good baguette and that, if the kitchen's not too busy and your date's really picky and you ask really, really nicely, they just might make you a paella for one.

The paella a la tierra, or “paella of the earth,” I devoured involved tender bits of roasted rabbit and duck, chunks of smoky chorizo and ethereal snails in a saffron-scented rice with peas, onions, red bell pepper and fresh lemon wedges. I can't recall eating more delicious snails: so earthy and rich, yet light and delicate, like soft little gills; not gummy or funky, just slightly chewy and redolent with saffron and smoke.

The rice itself was fantastic: short, fat, perfectly cooked grains of Bomba rice, a famed variety from the mountainous Calasparra region south of Valencia, Spain, where paella originates. The only thing missing for me was the characteristic bottom crust, the sort that develops when the rice nearest the pan toasts a little.

The dish was nevertheless amazing with a glass of the Viña Sastre, a wine made entirely from tempranillo grapes from Spain's Ribera del Duero region. The rich, full-bodied red — not oversweet or watery as tempranillos can sometimes be — smelled like a good cigar, with hints of tobacco, rustling leaves and cherry wood. It tasted of blackberries and a sort of grown-up-grape jam, and its mouth-pleasing astringency had me smacking and mm'ing all the way home.

A paella Sacramento I tried on another night was a little less successful. Named for the restaurant founder's mother, the dish involved the same delicious rice and vegetables with a mix of sea and land creatures. Of the shrimp, chicken, pork, calamari and mussels in the dish, all but the terrific calamari were a tad overcooked.

The only trouble with the tapas was narrowing down the choice. Of those we tried, my favorites were the grilled Catalan-style country sausage with slow-cooked beans and the garlic-laced mayonnaise known as allioli; a salad with nicely grilled vegetables (asparagus, zucchini, tomato, ridiculously good eggplant) and a peppy honey-and-mustard-tinged vinaigrette; the tender braised lamb with rosemary, bell peppers and garlic; and the diver scallops with a parsley, pine nut and roasted garlic pesto from the specials menu.

The lone dessert I made room for was a so-worth-it tres leches cake, a thick wedge of lemon pound cake soaked in three milks (sweetened condensed, evaporated and whole) and drizzled with a silky sauce that looked like caramel but tasted of summer peach.

Quibbles were few: The house salad — a better-than-the-sum-of-its-parts Romaine-chickpea-tomato medley that comes with the paella — was twice delivered too late to enjoy before the main dish. A few bits of colorless grit in the scallops had me briefly wondering if I'd broken a tooth. A beef-and-chicken cannelloni dish seemed too precious for the money (one filled cylinder of pasta, cut diagonally in half, for $7.50).

And, though I loved the simplicity of the Valencia-style endive (Belgian endive topped with goat cheese, extra virgin olive oil, orange segments and toasted Marcona almonds), I wished it had sweeter, more flavorful oranges.

Still, all the dishes worked with the mouth-perking red sangria: wine infused for 10 days with bits of apple, orange, lemon and lime.

And, perhaps owing in part to all that drunken fruit, I twice left España with a full stomach and the sense that I'd taken a mini-vacation for the comparatively modest price of a slightly indulgent meal.

Contact the writer:

444-1069, nichole.aksamit@owh.com

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