Although they border each other and both speak English, South Africa and Zimbabwe couldn’t be more different. Granted, my only basis for comparison are Cape Town and the town of Victoria Falls, but you know, they seemed pretty different. Essentially, Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe are poor. Like dirt poor. As in, so poor that their own currency has no value and they use American dollars instead. So with all this poverty, we were surprised to find a tapas restaurant called Lola’s in the middle of Victoria Falls.

After a few days of eating local African food, which was awesome, it was kind of nice to get a bit of European fare. We started out with albondigas, which is just a fancy Spanish word for meatballs. These were a combination of beef and pork, cooked with a tomato sauce and were quite delicious.

I followed that up with a chicken sandwich. I suppose this wasn’t exactly how tapas were meant to be eaten, but the sandwich just seemed like a good idea. It was served on a roll and topped with all sorts of terrible vegetables, along with cheese. It also came with sweet potato chips. It took me a while to dig out the good parts from all the vegetables, but as always in a foreign country, I don’t count such a thing against Lola’s. The sandwich was actually pretty good and made a nice complement to the meatballs.

Lola’s is a great spot to hit up if you’re ever in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Seriously, I know you’re going to find yourself there. You can thank me later.

Taking advantage of a special from Living Social, the girlfriend and I headed to Cobras & Matadors in Mid-City for a bit of a date night. The place specializes in tapas and is BYO with a slight corkage fee. We forgot the booze, so had to make up for it in food instead. The deal was for 70 bucks worth, so that meant we had a lot of tapas to eat. As usual, I eyed cheeses and meats, and was happy to be eating small plates because so much looked good.

We narrowed our tapas list down to something reasonable and placed our order. First and foremost were the bacon-wrapped dates (blue cheese, almond and port wine), followed by burrata in a jar (basil, olive oil, grilled bread and sea salt), baked Spanish goat cheese (port honey wine reduction, warm grapes) paprika spiced patatas and an order of oven roasted mussels for the girlfriend. It was a good start and we looked forward to downing our tapas.

First up was the burrata. This delicious, creamy derivative of mozzarella tasted amazing when spread across the pieces of bread that came with it. Not content to be a simple burrata, the flavor of basil and olive oil made the burrata in a jar a great way to start the meal. By the time the bread was finished, there was still burrata in the jar, so we saved what we had in the hopes that it could enhance a later dish.

Our next plate was the bacon-wrapped dates. Aside from the strange green plants (they looked like clovers, but do people eat clovers?!) garnishing the tops of the dates, they looked incredibly delicious. But with only four of them, I was bothered that they were 10 bucks. Had I not been getting a Living Social deal, this would have really gotten to me, put I pushed the thought from my mind and dug in. I found some very welcoming dates with nice, crisp bacon. Inside, the almonds added a nice crunch, but I found a lack of blue cheese. I don’t know if this was forgotten or what, but blue cheese is certainly a flavor that sticks out and refuses to be subtle. As if to apologize for this lack, the dates had been placed upon a wide, thin sheet of Italian meat that was essentially a pepperoni. It was a pleasant surprise, but I’m not sure if it was enough to make up for the missing cheese.

Next came the paprika spiced patatas. These were sort of like potato wedges, but in little chunks the size of home fries. Covering both American and European styles, they were served with ketchup and aioli, but I found an even better condiment: burrata! That’s right, although the ketchup went well with the patatas, I scraped what was left of the burrata and created a tasty mega-tapa not to be reckoned with.

Finally, my last dish came (remember the mussels weren’t for me), the baked Spanish goat cheese. Wow I love goat cheese. It was served on some bread with a reduction that ended up tasting a lot like balsamic. The combination was pretty tasty, but I couldn’t help thinking I could easily make this at home. The warm grapes that came with it, on the other hand, were simply weird. I don’t know why people decided it would be fun to warm up grapes, but to those people I have a message: If you’re going to heat them up, make sure you heat them enough that they dry and become raisins. Otherwise, keep them cold because they are just better that way.

With all of our dishes served, it was time to choose a dessert. And what dessert should we choose? More cheese! Yep, none of the actual desserts compared to how attractive the cheese platter was. I’m not really sure what cheeses were served aside from blue (stolen from my dates?) and some slices of what I assumed were Manchego. Yet, whatever they were – coupled with candied walnuts, apricot jam and some grilled bread – these cheeses made for a perfect unvegan dessert.

The cheese platter was a perfect way to end a great tapas meal. I always say there can never be too much cheese and this meal proved it. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have some bacon, pepperoni and potatoes thrown in there.

While wandering the Hermosa Pier in search for some sort of food to eat, the girlfriend and I discovered a place called Mediterraneo. It seemed like one of the few places on the pier that would be a better restaurant than a bar, so we decided to check it out. While the name implies Greek food, we were surprised to find that this wasn’t some simple gyro and pita place (although that wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing). Instead, we found that they were a tapas place that didn’t limit itself to the Spanish style. In addition to Spanish, there was also a nice Greek influence that could be found in menu items like hummus, beets and feta cheese.

I decided to start out with some hummus and pita as a warm-up, which turned out not to be the wisest decision. The hummus came out and looked like a scoop of ice cream, which was not a good sign. You see, I like my hummus to be creamy and the fact that this hummus retained that shape was a little frightening. Nonetheless, I gave it a go. As expected, it was way dry and just not very, but I still had a couple more plates to go.

My next tapa was called Patatas Bravas. These were fingerling tomatoes cooked in some spicy tomato sauce with paprika aioli. These things were really good and really well-seasoned. The potatoes were nice and soft and flavorful and the paprika flavoring was a nice addition to the mix.

My final dish was called Sobrasada. This was composed of cured pork sausage from Mallorca, Spain, toasted baguette, manchego and quince. I wasn’t entirely sure how this would look when it came, but when it arrived I saw that it was all already put together. It looked pretty awesome and tasted quite good too. The quince was really sweet and the manchego offered a nice balance to the sweetness. The only issue with it was that somewhere along the line, something got really oily. As a devout unvegan, I am no stranger to oil and have no problem with that juice, but the trouble here was that the oil seeped into the bread and created a bit of a sogfest. The delicious taste was all there, but there was something lost in the texture.

Although my dishes were pretty good, the girlfriend actually ended up getting something even better, called Bistec (just a fancy Spanish word for steak). This was some really juicy and flavorful thin-cut filet mignon. It didn’t have much seasoning, which was fine because it tasted just right as it was.

Mediterraneo surprised me in a few ways. First, it taught me that tapas didn’t need to be limited to Spanish food, but it also taught me that the Hermosa Pier actually has some good food. Sure, I like bar food, but this was a place to sit down and actually enjoy the pier without needing a beer in hand.

So in the middle of dineLA’s Restaurant Week, we decided to pay a visit to Upstairs 2 for some dinner. This little restaurant hangs out above the Wine House in West LA and if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would probably never find it. Luckily, we knew what we were looking for and found it just fine. After parking on the roof, I found the restaurant to have a pretty swanky atmosphere that was just light enough to read the menus.

As we all began to read our menus, we realized that although the Restaurant Week fixed menu looked good, it did not look nearly as good as the items on their regular menu, so one by one, we all decided to forget restaurant week and go our own way. This regular menu was uniquely organized by the type of wines the food would go with and consisted of smallish plates that were bigger than tapas, but not quite the size of a full entree. We way began with an order of their Medjool Dates Wrapped in Serrano Ham for everyone to split. These were stuffed with Asiago cheese I found them to be a nice twist on bacon wrapped dates. After that, we went our separate ways with our orders.

I decided on two things. The first was their Prosciutto and Fig Flatbread. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this dish, but when it came out, it looked pretty amazing. I bit in and almost squealed with delight. This was one of the best individual foods I had ever tasted, I don’t know what they did, but somehow they made the cheese, bread, figs and prosciutto work together in such delicious harmony that makes me want to go back there right now as I write this and eat it again.

To follow up this amazing flatbread, I ordered their Grilled Elk Tenderloin. This came with sauteed spinach, roasted fennel and sherry glaze. I asked for it without the spinach, which must have been mixed with the fennel, because the waiter gave me a quixotic look as he told me it would come out simply as the elk and I told him that was perfect. The elk came out just as I had hoped it would, free of any frightful veggies. It did look a bit naked, but I was fine with that. It tasted pretty similar to beef tenderloin, but had a stronger overall taste to it while being a bit tougher.

I’m really glad Restaurant Week led me to Upstairs 2 so I could eat that amazing flatbread. Although nobody took advantage of the fixed meal, the food I ended up eating was really very good.

Bar Pintxo. How the hell do you pronounce this place?  It’s not an easy thing to do. If only the x moved back one letter to be before the t, things would be much easier. Alas, that is the restaurant I went to for some tapas.

Ordering at this tapas bar was kind of a double-edged sword for an unvegan. On one hand, I could take a look at all food available and decide what to order based on which tapas didn’t have vegetables. On the other hand, all the tapas were prepared ahead of time and I couldn’t order without the veggies.

Before, ordering, however, we had to get ourselves some libations. They had Stella Artois on tap for a pretty good price, but being at a tapas place, I ordered a sangria. This was also decently cheap. To start off, we ordered queso de Espana platter, which had some very good cheeses, including picon, idiazabal and manchego. It was slightly lacking in bread, but once we had used up all the bread resources, the waitress was happy to bring us more.

Then we started ordering the rest of our rounds. First we went with two of the best looking unvegan items on the menu. This was the chorizo with fried quail eggs and the dates wrapped in bacon with cabrales cheese. These were both quite a treat. The chorizo came in little pieces rather than in the sausage-like form I was expecting and the quail egg made it even more interesting. The bacon dates were heavenly and although I am not one of those people who advocates adding bacon to everything, sometimes it just finds itself in perfect harmony with other food.

We also ordered the huevos rellenos con vinagreta vasca. Since I hadn’t seen this dish at the bar yet, I ended up being pretty disappointed when it came out. Unfortunately the menu had made no mention that the eggs would be topped with some sort of peppers. I scraped these off pretty easily and was able to salvage at least a little good out of them.

.With that, we moved on from the tapas and ordered a couple main plates. First was the patatas bravas, which was a potato dish with salsa brava and roasted carlic aioli. This dish, although meatless, was really really good. It was so good, in fact, that even though I launched half of a potato covered with sauce onto my shirt and pants, I still had no hard feelings for the dish.

Finally, to finish the meal off, we ordered the tortilla Espanola. Although this came with carmelized onions, I didn’t order it without because my girlfriend wanted them. I figured I would just pick them out when it came. Unfortunately, when it arrived, I found this would be no easy task. Somehow the caramelized onions looked eerily similar to potatoes and I found myself mixing up the two on multiple occasions.

All in all, Bar Pintxo turned out to be a very good experience. It was a bit on the pricey side despite the little dishes all seeming cheap (very deceiving), but worth it for some pretty good tapas.