Tapa.  Plural, tapas.  Defined as "any of various small, savory Spanish dishes, often served as a snack or with other tapas as a meal.  Spain is replete with tapas bars, local gathering spots where one can enjoy a glass of sherry or sangria, feast on little snacks, and review the events of the day with friends.  I know of one very good place in Waltham, Massachusetts, Solea Restaurant and Tapas Bar, with a tapas menu of some 40 items, but that's a long way to drive. 

I've good news for tapas lovers, though.  Today, you don't have to leave Cape Cod for the tapas experience. There's a place at 800 Route 6A, in Dennis, MA that opened last July 4 weekend.  It's called Gracie's Table, it's easy to find, and find it you should.

We were greeted warmly at the door by a staff that was friendly and engaging during the entire evening.  We were shown to a table that had white linen, long-stemmed water and wine glasses, and a simple candle holder.  The walls of the first floor dining room are a chocolate brown, and the cushioned banquette was littered with beautiful and comfortable pillows.  The room was softly lit, and muted Spanish guitar music rounded out a warm and inviting ambiance.

The first floor dining room seats 16, and the bar area has six stools and one table.  The upstairs dining room seats about 20, for a total occupancy of 44.  On a weeknight visit, the upstairs dining room was full, but we had the down stairs dining room to ourselves (we ate early).  We did notice a fellow at the bar, though, who was treating himself to a paella that was very inviting, and we did vow to try this dish on a return visit.

Our server approached with a basket of bread slices and a bottle of one of the most wonderful extra virgin olive oils I have tasted.  She poured some onto a shared plate that we used for dipping the bread.  We also enjoyed a terrific white wine, a Vivente Pinot Grigio.  The wine list is impressive, as is the list of specialty drinks (some of which are built with flavor infusions made in-house), single malts and even dessert Martinis.

The tapas menu includes some 16 offerings, and we queried our server on her favorites.  Those happened to be the ones we were interested in sampling, and so we ordered six to share. The first was calamari (squid), stuffed with a savory mix of garlic, onion and Bayonne ham. They had been cooked slowly in a sauce of red bell pepper, tomato, beef stock and their own black ink, and they were wonderful, tender and flavorful. The Catalan spinach had been quickly sauteed with garlic, raisins, pine nuts and olive oil.

The potato and chorizo (spicy sausage) tortilla was an egg dish with those ingredients, and was quite satisfying.  Wild mushrooms were served with a sauce based on ground nuts thickened with toasted bread and flavored with garlic, fresh herbs and wine. They were earthy and rich, and the sauce only enhanced the mushrooms rather than overcome them.  The roasted piquillo peppers were bright red "cups" that held garbanzo beans, and were served with a green sauce of fresh herbs and olive oil.  

The final dish was barbecued lamb chops, accompanied by their wonderful, and signature, Basque sauce.  The Basque region of Spain is in the western Pyrennes and the Bay of Biscay between Spain and France.  A Basque sauce will be based on garlic, tomatoes and chilies, with sweet, aromatic flavors, and Gracie's Table's version is simply sublime.  What sauce we could not gather with the lamb chops, we finished using some extra pieces of bread we requested for the purpose, and then, finally, by using a spoon.

The tapas menu also includes a creamy pate with organic liver, bacon, green apples and unagi (eel); jumbo prawns (shrimp) that are tossed on a flat griddle with sherry vinegar, garlic, lemon and chili flakes; and, a dish referred to as "Potatoes of Importance," a peasant snack from Seville of paper thin potato, ham and Chaume (a wine from the Chaume village in the Loire region of southwest France),  cooked until golden and topped with a white wine parsley sauce.  We wish we had been able to sample two others:  cauliflower manchego raviolis, served with a zucchini cream sauce and sauteed spinach; and, bacalao (salt cod) pureed with garlic, potato and cooked egg yolks, topped with emulsified garlic, onion and chili flakes. We had no room left, though, and resolved to order them on our next visit.  Manchego, by the way, is a wonderful cheese from La Mancha (hence, the name), a goat's milk cheese, that also works well in lasagna dishes, or simply grated.

There is an entree menu at Gracie's Table, also, but our visits were to sample the tapas menu.  Included on the entree menu was a beef tenderloin, a roasted half duck, pork confit (which our server enthusiastically said was her personal favorite), the paella, one chicken dish and a rack of lamb.  As for us, though, the tapas were what brought us in, and we were not disappointed.  We'll get to the entrees next time around, and report back to you at a later date, sometime after the new year.

The dessert menu is quite limited, but also quite excellent. The three choices are a maple creme brulee, Thai coconut rice pudding with genmai ice cream, and a warm, soft bittersweet chocolate cake, cooked to order and served right out of the oven.  We chose the creme brulee and the rice pudding.  Genmai ice cream is a toasted rice and green tea concoction, made in house, and with a delicate but pleasant flavor.  The rice pudding was exquisite, and the combination of the pudding and the ice cream was heavenly.  When the table was cleared of tapas plates and utensils, the linen was cleaned and a fresh linen napkin was spread for the serving of desserts, a very nice touch.  

The serving vessels are worth mentioning to you. Each of the tapas was served in a different style of bowl or plate, each with their own colors and patterns, but in what seemed like a carefully chosen coordination. In fact, all of what we saw suggested to us that a great deal of thought had been given to every aspect of a diner's experience at Gracie's Table, both to satisfy the palate and the eye.  Even the tea pot was a heavy cast, a midnight blue with bamboo detail, intended to keep the water hot for a long time.

Chef/Owner Ann Austin, and dessert chef Michelle Rabara, have done an impressive job in their first five months of operation to create a memorable eating venue.  Our meal of tapas, wine, dessert and tea, was $80, exclusive of tip, so we have to include Gracie's Table in the upscale category of restaurants and hold it to a higher standard of measure.   Even so, with a total score of 47 out of a possible 50, Cape Dining Out awards Gracie's Table a 4-Cods rating, our highest, and recommends you sample the tapas soon.