Felix Salmon

Thanks for the welcome. Frankly, I don't think I'm often in the mood for high-end tapas, specifically. I didn't go to Casa Mono last night because I wanted high-end tapas: I went because I wanted a relatively informal meal with good food, and that's exactly what I got. Can I find food that good elsewhere at a lower price? Yes. Can I get it in "small plate" form? Yes -- they're everywhere these days. Will all the food and wine have some kind of Spanish flavour to it? Maybe not -- but I don't really think that's important. And in any case I doubt the average Spaniard would feel particularly at home at Casa Mono -- as one of my dining companions said, a $16 tapa isn't really a tapa.

Ah, but are there other restaurants in NY serving that kind and quality of food for that money? ← I guess you're asking if there are other, cheaper high-end tapas places in NYC. Good question. Are there?

Went to Casa Mono last night. Got there early for a 7:30 reservation, and they were very good at parking me in the bar next door until the table and my group were ready. Food was fantastic, especially the sweetbreads -- we ended up ordering them three times. (Total for sweetbreads alone: $48, plus tax and tip. Ouch!) As others have also said, the lamb shank is amazing, and we also had a couple of orders of the fideos -- a small clam pasta dish. We certainly had no problem ordering sequentially rather than all at once at the beginning. We went for $65-70 wines which were perfectly good but did not quite rise to their price point. But maybe I'm just not a Spanish-wine kind of person. Total for 3-4 people came to $478 before tip: I can definitely think of a lot of other restaurants where we could eat and drink more and better for that kind of money. (There were 3 people at any one time; one person left halfway through to be replaced by another person.) We weren't rushed at all, and left more than four hours after we arrived. Service was OK. Upshot? A happy, bustling, great vibe, with excellent food -- definitely go there if you're not paying. Wasn't too noisy or too cramped for me, although it was a Monday night.

I go to Pampano every chance I get. Might be going there tomorrow night, actually, in which case I'll report back. But despite being to few of the restaurants mentioned in this thread, I can't imagine there's much better than Pamano for high-end Mexican dining in NYC.