El Tapeo

We went to dinner at El Tapeo in Oakbrook at Le Meridien hotel. This restaurant opened about 6 months ago and we had heard good things about it.  It is mostly a tapas restaurant but does have some entree size dishes as well.  We decided to go with a bunch of small plates so we could try a bunch of stuff.

Pan con Tomate - spanish style toast with tomato jam and spanich olive oil, with manchego cheese. There were a few pieces of toast with the tomato jam on top.  It was sweeter  than we thought but good.  We wish there had been a little more grated manchego cheese on top because there was an up charge for this.

Pan con Tomate

Pimientos - blistered shishito peppers, with lemon zest and sea salt.  This was definitely the best deal of the bunch. When it came to the table it seemed like a very large amount of peppers. We were thinking there would only be about half as many.  Nick liked the peppers but thought they would be a bit more charred given the description.  Natalie thought there should have been a sauce to go with them.  She ended up dipping them in the leftover sauces from the other dishes.

Mushroom Fritters

Datiles - bacon wrapped medjool dates stuffed with marcona almonds.  This was Nick's favorite dish.  He is a sucker for bacon wrapped dates. They satisfied his need for both a sweet and savory bite.

Croquetas de Setas - cremini mushroom fritters and cilantro yogurt.  This was Natalie's favorite dish - little mushroom bundles that had a lot of flavor to them.

Pimientos

Patatas Bravas - fingerling potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce, creme fraiche and scallions. Nick just thought this dish was okay but Natalie liked it.  These were served warm and the sauce wasn't too spicy. Because this was a potato dish it made us think of one of our favorite potato tapas dishes - the garlic potato salad served at both Meson Sabika and Emilio's. No potato dish will ever compare to that one.

Bacon wrapped dates

Sopa de Calabasa - roasted butternut squash bisuqe with granny smith apples, serrano ham and mahon cheese.  This is the only soup on their menu.  It was a nice and creamy soup.  The apples, ham and cheese were cut into little cubes and were sitting on a floating crouton in the middle of the dish.  We wish there could have been a bit more of those cubes or bigger pieces of them.

Patatas Bravas

Salpicon Cangrejo de Mar - lump crab salad, avocado and blood orange gelle over toast points.  The presentation was interesting - the crab salad was topped with a layer of avocado and then a circular layer of the orange jelle.  Combined it tasted very interesting.  We wish there had been a couple more pieces of the toast so we didn't have to pile so much on the toast we had.

Final thoughts on El Tapeo:

Butternut Squash Bisque

Food - the food was good.  Certainly the small plates sounded a bit more interesting to us than the entrees and that way we got to try a little more of the menu options. Maybe because we are so used to the tapas options at other tapas restaurants we probably would choose those places over El Tapeo.  But that isn't to say this food wasn't good just that maybe we have just had those so often we are more familiar and comfortable with those options.

Lump Crab Salad

Service - there weren't that many customers there on a weeknight.  The service was good but there were a couple of times when we thought the server could have gotten to us a little quicker. We ordered the food in 2 batches, but maybe we should have less in more batches because 5 small plates came to us at once. Luckily there were small and could fit on the table but maybe that could have been paced better.

Atmosphere - El Tapeo is located on the 9th floor of Le Meridien Hotel, so it is a neat setting. It is located near most of the other restaurants at Oak Brook Mall, so probably most of the other patrons were staying at the hotel.