Tapas Trip

SOME TYPES OF food are just more fun to eat than others. Food that you eat with your hands, food that requires sharing, food that calls for props or additional preparations at the table-fondu, yakitori, shabu shabu, tapas-also tends to be more enjoyable.

The other night I met some friends at Tia Pol, a new tapas restaurant in Chelsea. Located across the street from the Empire Diner, just sipping cava at the bar while looking out toward the restaurant's neighbor made me feel like I was gloating.

While waiting for our table, three of us warmed up with glasses of 1999 Marques de Gelida cava ($7) and Estrella de Galicia ($4), a generic Spanish beer, while tackling the altramuces-wet, salty beans that taste like seawater and are typical bar snacks in Madrid.

In many ways, the meal at Tia Pol was an exercise in novel curiosity. An air of experimentation prevailed that made trying the dishes not only interesting, but an adventure. Some of the tapas-like the most overtly bizarre chorizo chocolate ($3.50), 72 percent chocolate spread on sliced baguette with cured chorizo and Korean chili threads-though not wholly successful, were at least appreciated for their sense of daring.

A whimsical special of sea urchin with pistachio oil, avocado and melon ($12) was perhaps the most lyrical of the meal, an experience at once marine and mineral, unctuous and refreshing. More surprises were to be found in the elegant dish of cured sliced duck breast ($16), topped off with a crunchy sprinkle of Maldon sea salt and accompanied by a borderline erotic burst baby eggplant, a dead ringer for a plump black fig, that had been candied with honey, saffron and arcana oil.

Gernika peppers ($7), the wild-card dish of the evening, were blistered whole Basque peppers sprinkled with sea salt, some of which were hot, and some that were not, a somewhat risky proposition, since the only way to find out was to eat them.

The least successful of the experiments wasn't terribly tasty but worth savoring for its creativity and humor: a dessert float of red wine sorbet and Coca-Cola ($6), a take on kalimocho, a favorite starter drink for Spanish teenagers.

The more traditional dishes were on the whole reliable, though not as thrilling. Juicy lamb skewers ($5), tender chunks of lamb marinated in a mix of cumin, olive oil, cayenne, coriander and lemon juice, were very good. But the Galician style octopus terrine ($11), soft chunks of Atlantic octopus topped with sea salt and smoked paprika, received mixed reviews from our table. The barbecued flavor of the paprika was praiseworthy, but the gelee that bound the octopus was somewhat irksome to one faint-hearted diner. Another disappointment were the deviled eggs ($3), which were served too cold, had rubbery whites and were laden to the point of bitterness with paprika. Our vegetarian friend was more pleased with the lima bean puree, which had clean hints of garlic, spread on toast with creamy los beyos cheese ($3.50), probably the freshest, greenest dish of the evening.

Guiltier pleasures were the flash-fried chickpeas ($3) with (more) smoked paprika and sea salt, and the deliciously oily patatas bravas ($4), crisp-on-the-outside, starchy-on-the-inside fried potatoes prodigiously drizzled with spicy aioli. A pitcher of sangria with plums ($20) was slightly vinegary, but symbolically a good accompaniment to the meal.

Torta Santiago ($6), a Galician almond cake that apparently is a religious confection traditionally prepared by nuns, was the more pristine dessert that accompanied our puerile coke float. The dense, puck-shaped cake served with rice- pudding ice cream and a smear of chocolate sauce was, if not holy, satisfying.

The restaurant is a stylish, spirited effort by friends Heather Belz, formerly of Oznot's Dish in Williamsburg and Mani Dawes, who previously worked at 'ino, who were roommates together for a bit in Madrid and developed an aim to "bring a sampling of regional Spanish cuisine" to city diners. The message, unwittingly, was appreciated by one of my dining companions that night. "I'm a dilettante," she said, "So that was the perfect kind of meal for me."o