"Now mama don't you worry none
From small things, mama
Big things one day come"
(Bruce Springsteen - From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)
Vento is a tapas restaurant located off one of the spokes of the Paradisus central atrium. It offers four salads, eleven cold tapas or small plates, fifteen hot tapas, and five dessert tapas.
It's quite an elegant restaurant. You have the choice of sitting outside the main dining room in the atrium, or in the main dining room, which we chose. But we noticed it was noisy inside- perhaps a result of the open kitchen and bar areas that weren't too far from our seats, so we heard the shake, rattle, and roll of every dish, pot, and pan.
Before we ordered, we were served a welcome drink that was excellent (some sort of strawberry and vodka concoction) and a basket with two small loaves of bread. The waiter very ceremoniouslly poured oil and a splash of vinegar into our three bread plates.
We had a blast ordering. The waiter suggested we each order one salad, one cold tapas and four hot tapas. So we ended up with like 20 different things that all looked beautiful.
My wife and son ordered the mozzarealla pizza from the hot menu, but it wasn't hot at all- kind of unappealingly warm.
Here is my report on the tapas I tried:
The greek salad was very good- lots of olives, which as an olive guy I appreciated, plus diced tomatoes, onions, peppers and crumbled feta cheese.
An excellent cold soup (Ajo Blanco) served in what looked like a test tube with about a quarter cup of shrimp tartar. The shrimp tartar was delicious.
Charcoal grilled octopus was a big chunk of an octo's tentacle served with potatoes in a sweet paprika oil. I didn't care for this at all. I've had octopus a few times and liked it, but this dish tasted a lot stronger than I expected.
Black Baby Squid over wild rice - not a fan - it just wasn't something I liked, aesthetically so and taste wise.
Pan fried shrimp with curry and chick peas over wild rice. Wonderful - my favorite dish of the evening - just bursting with flavor. I would have loved a big plate of it.
Braised Veal Cheek with cauliflower and mushrooms. It had a very soft and delicate texture and was pretty good.
King scallops with a green bean and pork ragout - another very good dish.
Dessert tapas on the menu were a variety of sorbets, churros, ice creams, tiramiso and a custard.
I ordered the vanilla custard, and it was very ordinarily flan-like. On the other hand, the Nutella ice cream was absolutely sensational.
Our server was helpful and not intrusive, he explained the tapas concept and was swift in clearing the table and refilling the beverages.
All in all, we had an enjoyable time and a pretty good meal. read more