Tapas at Ocho

If you follow this blog you'll recognize Ocho as a restaurant on my wish list. Cycling on an unusually sunny day (for Seattle) and searching for a sunny spot to sit outside and have a beer and bite, we stumbled upon Ocho in Ballard. Ocho has inexpensive tapas and we had three different ones: pan con chocolate (chocolate melted on toast topped with truffle oil, toasted almonds and flor da sal), alcochofas (fried morsels of artichokes in a lemony mayonnaise) and a 2-ounce morsel of beef on top of Spanish blue cheese mash potatoes topped with crispy fried onions. If the chocolate toast sounds weird, well it was a bit unusual but delicously savory. Chocolate on bread is a childhood favorite of many Europeans, especially children who eat hard squares of chocolate or Nutella, their peanut butter substitute, on bread. The restaurant is small and though it had a dinner menu, I would recommend a selection of tapas to share at $3 a plate. (www.ochoballard.com)