Taberna del Alabardero

Eavesdroppers, take note: You’re not likely to do better than this Old World—style charmer, an expense-account favorite with the Spanish Embassy and the nearby World Bank. So much business is conducted over the long, leisurely lunches and dinners that define the Taberna style that, when it’s crowded, you’re bound to pick up some nugget or other about forthcoming changes in policy and what high-ranking figure is about to get screwed. Great stuff. Only problem is, the juiciness of the talk can divert your attention from the other real reason you’re here: the food. Taberna is on its third chef in three years, with Santi Zabaleta taking over the kitchen in the wake of the departures of Enrique Sanchez and Josu Zubikarai, both of whom left to return home to Spain. Zabaleta has settled in, and this longtime restaurant is again running smoothly. The occasional note of indifference from the kitchen or the wait staff remains an issue, but when it’s on, Taberna del Alabardero can deliver up an experience as relaxed, as comfortable, and as delicious as any restaurant in its class in the city. The cooking, at its best, manages the difficult trick of being both elegant and rustic, with many dishes rooted in long-standing, poverty-based traditions: A casserole of white beans with pork rib and pork belly tastes as though it had been ladled from a kitchen in the Spanish countryside, only without the burdensome heaviness; a garlic soup, with soft bits of custard alongside hunks of day-old bread, evokes, with surprising subtly, the glorious resourcefulness of that keeper of culinary continuity, the Spanish grandmother. A recent special of bacalao, or salt cod, shows the kitchen’s facility with its fish, the fillet as moist, meaty, and flavorful as you could expect. Paella is well-represented (if not always well-honored) with multiple preparations, and there’s also a good and varied selection of tapas—that handy, if by no means representative, précis of Spanish cuisine.
—Todd Kliman, November 12, 2004