Toro

Last night, my work friends and I ventured out to Toro in the South End (Boston if any non-Bostonians read this). I had heard a lot about Toro and had been dying to go.

But sorry, I forgot to take pictures so I am just going to describe my experience. I know, what food blogger doesn't take pictures of their food? #fail. 

Toro is part of Ken Oringer's Boston empire which includes Coppa, Clio, and others. It is a Barcelona-style tapas bar with true Spanish tapas of all types. This place is on the small side and unfortunately does not take reservations. We had an hour and a half wait (my friend expected it to be two hours) and even had to put our name in for the bar! But two seats at the bar did open up after about 45 minutes of waiting then a third seat opened and we were golden. We had a bit of a challenge because one of us (not me) is vegetarian and another of us (not me) was observing Lent and also has a gluten intolerance. But this was the place for us, plenty to pick from. 

We all drank the Verdad Y Amor cocktail which was tequila, hibiscus, lime, and ginger. Awesome combination and it was a lovely dark pink shade. We might have had a couple of those. Just a couple.

I'm going to list the tapas we had. All were amazing.

• Tortilla Espanola (basically like a creamier frittata with potatoes and aioli
• Escalivada Catalana (smoked eggplant with onions, peppers, and tomatoes that could be sopped up with bread)
• Maiz Asado con Alioli y Queso Cotija ("street corn" that was slathered in cheese, aioli, lime, and espelette pepper. It was charred to perfection)
• Filete a la Plancha (grilled, marinated skirt steak with butter and red onion marmalade)
• Patatas Bravas (pieces of heaven or also fried potatoes with aioli and a spicy tomato sauce)

Apparently there was a pork belly dish that was highly recommended but they changed it and made it into pork belly sliders. The bartender had a discussion with us about this. We decided not to go with the sliders (due to the meat/gluten issue) but he brought a single pork belly slider with a harissa BBQ sauce and kimchi just for me. Awesome.

Another funny story. My friend noticed the bartender had a small tattoo on his hand and she asked if it was the Scorpio symbol and if he was a Scorpio. He was basically like, no, I'm an Aquarius. So I asked him when his birthday is. Turns out, we had the same birthday! He gave us mini Palomas (grapefruit juice and tequila) in celebration of this historic day that two awesome people were born on. 

And then we went home.

I call that a successful night.


Update

My friend Mandy is a picture hoarder but she did decide to give me a picture. So now I have one picture of myself from my actual birthday at Blue on Highland in Needham.