Tapas Preparation: Small Plates Provide Multiple Menu Choices

Kitchen equipment found in tapas and small plate operations helps enhance the speed and efficiency of menu service and may include some specialty items.

Foodservice Equipment & Supplies - August 2005

By Laura Doty
Contributing Editor

Historically, tapas, literally “covers,” were small food bowls, frequently containing delicious tidbits such as olives or almonds, placed on top of wine glasses in Spanish wine bars to keep flies out of the wine. The tapas small-plate tradition, long a part of Spanish culture, has expanded through the years and now represents a full-blown dining trend encompassing many types of cuisines.

Inspired by classic Spanish tapas menus after a trip to Barcelona, Chef/Owner Tim McKee and Managing Partner Josh Thoma, well-known Minneapolis restaurateurs, opened Solera in downtown Minneapolis in 2003 to instantaneous rave reviews. Patrons at Solera choose small plates from the more than 60 hot and cold tapas offerings, with some specialty items served only in the curved mosaic front tapas bar or the seasonal rooftop patio area. An extensive and affordable wine list, including many varieties of sherry imported directly from Spain, is an added draw for Solera’s customers. Solera’s three-story location also includes special event dining rooms on the second and third floors, popular for parties, with seating for up to 200.

At the tapas bar, chefs prepare menu items display-style, such as chorizo or shrimp à la plancha, using a 2-ft. grill and a sauté station that includes a four-burner range top and built-in Spanish plancha flat-top griddle. The display-cooking area also includes a hand sink, two low-boy reach-in refrigerators, and a sandwich prep table that incorporates a refrigerated rail with drop-in pans to hold ingredients. Cooking on the patio rooftop is accomplished solely on a 3-ft. grill, where popular montiditos (small Spanish-style hamburgers) are prepared, and a refrigerated sandwich prep table with a low-boy reach-in beneath that holds ingredients for small sandwiches (boquitos) and other cold tapas items available from the rooftop menu.

Located off the 160-seat dining room, Solera’s main kitchen supports the restaurant’s tapas menus with a 50-ft. hot line, including two six-burner sauté ranges, 3-ft. grill, double fryer and a salamander. Four sandwich prep tables with refrigerated rails on top to hold various ingredients are key equipment items in the main kitchen, according to Matt Bickford, Solera’s executive chef. The tables are organized to enhance the preparation of the extensive small plate menu offerings. Solera also houses a production kitchen area in the basement, where prep work is supported by equipment including a 60-qt. jacketed steam kettle, two tilting skillets, standing mixer, food processors, three-compartment sink and stainless prep tables. Chef McKee was responsible for designing kitchen areas specifically to support the tapas concept.

“We’ve been attracting a very diverse clientele to Solera, and we’re extremely pleased with the way the Spanish tapas-style menus have been embraced by our customers,” McKee says. “To hedge our bets, we included a few entrée items on our menu, but it turns out that those items represent less than 10% of orders.”

Classic Spanish tapas menus, tweaked by the chef, are also featured at the four locations of Emilio’s Tapas, all located in the Chicago area. Chef Emilio Gervilla spent his youth working in his grandfather’s bakery and tapas bar in Granada, Spain. After many years spent working in other people’s kitchens, including Chicago’s first tapas bar, Café Ba Ba Reba, Gervilla realized his dream, opening his first tapas restaurant in 1988.

Gervilla knows exactly what he needs in the kitchens of his tapas restaurants, and designed each one in a similar configuration. Equipment for the kitchens echoes some key items found in Solera’s kitchen, including six-burner sauté ranges incorporating flat-top plancha griddles, small fryers and 2-ft. grills. Gervilla adds a double-stack pizza oven to his equipment mix, which he finds very versatile in supporting his menus. Refrigerated sandwich prep tables to hold ingredients are also key items in Gervilla’s kitchens. “One aspect of tapas menu service is that it has to be fast,” Gervilla says, “and the sandwich prep table helps make the kitchen very efficient.”

Prep areas adjacent to kitchens at Emilio’s contain stainless tables, standing mixers, blenders and food processors. Food items are stored in two designated walk-in coolers found in the prep area, one for produce, one for protein. “Our ingredients are all fresh, so we need no freezer except a small one for ice cream,” Gervilla adds.

Chef Mark Stark, and his wife Terri, first brought the concept of contemporary “small plates” dining to Sonoma County, Calif., with the 2002 opening of Willi’s Wine Bar, followed by Willi’s Seafood and Raw Bar, which opened in Healdsburg, Calif., in 2003. People can meet for wine and cocktails at Willi’s and order multiple small plates of all kinds of menu items, and pass everything around to share, which is a different dining experience than sitting down to a traditional, fancy, three-course meal,” says Chef Stark.

As its name suggests, Willi’s Seafood and Raw Bar specializes in seafood, including ceviches and popular New England-style lobster rolls, but the small plate menu also offers “skewers from the grill,” including minted lamb, marinated chicken and hangar steak. Raw oysters and shellfish are stored on ice in a self-draining glass display case on one end of Willi’s bar area, where they are prepared and plated for service. Ceviches and tartare items are held behind the bar in a glass-fronted cooler, along with containers and plastic squeeze bottles containing the spices, sauces and condiments needed for service. Small bowls and small square plates for service are tucked into the shelving areas behind the bar.

The small, yet well-organized back kitchen at Willi’s Seafood includes a hot line and two prep areas around a central chef’s table, all configured to enhance the service style at Willi’s. “The small kitchen here is a challenge every day to work in, but we’re built for speed,” says Chef Matt Gordon. Two side-by-side, four-burner range tops are key equipment pieces, along with small, 7-in. cast-iron sauté pans, to the one-pan firing style used for preparation of many menu items. “We’re not expediting meals of different ingredients that all come together to be served at once,” Gordon explains. “As orders come into the kitchen for multiple small plates for a table, we fire them, plate them and bang, they’re out the door, usually in about seven minutes.”

The hot line at Willi’s also includes a mini, 2-ft. grill, used for vegetables and for skewered menu items. A small, hot-holding oven with slide-out racks at one end of the line holds pre-prepared items such as the grilled veggies, and a cheese melter above is used primarily to toast the buttered rolls for lobster rolls and oyster po-boys. The central chef’s table includes eight refrigerated drawers beneath for product holding, a refrigerated well for sauces and condiments, and plates and bowls stored above for convenience in plating and serving food quickly. Large, insulated alligator clips, ingeniously used at Willi’s to facilitate the grilling and serving of skewered menu items, are clipped along one edge of the chef’s table near the small grill, ready to grab the end of stainless skewers.

The small, unique Kuma Inn, found on the second floor of an obscure location on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is an example of the international menus and flavors now inspiring chefs’ tapas-style small plate presentations. After stints cooking in the New York City kitchens at Daniel and Bouley, Chef King Phojanakong opened his 30-seat venue to explore his Thai-Filipino culinary roots. Menu items such as elegantly presented scallops, or mushrooms with bamboo shoots, are boldly seasoned with the chilis, garlic and citric kalamansi juice that Phojanakong remembers from his family’s home kitchen.

The tiny open kitchen at Kuma Inn contains a six-burner sauté range top and 3-ft. grill under the small exhaust hood. While two-thirds of the grill is used for cooking, one-third of the grill is covered to provide radiant heat for sauces used in menu preparation. Tucked under the parallel wooden expediting counter is a hand sink and double-door low-boy refrigerator to hold ingredients that Phojanakong shops for daily in local markets. Next to a small three-compartment sink adjacent to the mini hot line, a rice cooker sits atop a compact dishwasher of the type usually found under a bar.

“The dishwasher is perhaps my favorite piece of equipment in my kitchen, “Phojanakong says. “Our small tapas-style plates and bowls fit into it perfectly, and we can recycle dishes directly from service into the dishwasher and then back into service. This helps greatly in solving the challenge of very limited kitchen storage space.”