Tasca, Auckland City

The tapas are good simple, peasant food that is undemanding and inexpensive. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Herald rating: * * *

Tasca was keeping continental hours when we turned up for tapas in mid-afternoon. No, the barista told us sadly, he couldn't serve us wine.

Not because the ever-so-Spanish cafe - named from the backstreet tapas bars that are so much part of the Iberian lifestyle - had closed for siesta. No, the manager was off the premises and in an enterprising display of skilled migrants doing their best to accommodate New Zealand rules and regulations, the barista was on coffee duties. Nothing more.

We had come for the Vulcan Lane hole-in-the-wall eatery and drinkery's speciality: little plates of everyday food taken with glasses of wine. Particularly the house tinto enjoyed a couple of times previously. So much so that ... "We should come here and try the food as well," Emma decreed.

The lack of wine did put us off that day, but we returned next afternoon when management was in its rightful place. Spring, which had arrived on the previous day, wasn't.

We'd thought about a table on the lane to further conjure an hour's illusion of a pavement in Madrid, or Granada. Today, even with the heaters on full, it would have been a delusion, though one brave fashionable soul did her best to complete the picture.

We joined the be-suited crowd inside. Most ate off the lunch menu, which offers the usual (toast, bagels) and the less so - platters of warm chicken, roast vege or chorizo salad.

For us, tapas - to deliver different tastes, flavours, for grazing and chatting.Emma wanted the olives. Our bowl not only arrived with several varieties but also fresh feta, tomatoes and lettuce. Chorizo, sauteed with bread cubes, was hotter, spicier than most of the imitations in Aotearoa.

The highlight was tortilla espanola - the Spanish original, akin to frittata, dense with onion and potato, bound with not too much egg, and topped with the tang of a concentrated tomato and paprika puree.

Our least favourite? Albondigas, Spanish meatballs cooked with almonds. The menu said "a traditional tomato gravy". We thought it nearer Kiwi tomato sauce.

"The meatballs are pretty plain," said Emma. "Perhaps we get so used to dressed-up takes on these dishes in flash restaurants," I suggested, "that we forget that they're supposed to be simple, peasant food."

Which is pretty much how Tasca is: "a casual, unpretentious eatery offering tapas, wine and beer in a relaxed, colourful atmosphere", as the website puts it.

Relaxed, indeed. On a chilly day you'll get to meet fellow diners at neighbouring tables as you convivially decide whose turn it is to close the door and keep the draught out.

The sort of place that makes you want to hang around, chatting, to see if it was the tinto or the rioja that you liked better. Unfortunately, the rioja is available only by the bottle.

As we rounded off with a yummy, if un-Spanish, warmed chocolate brownie with ice-cream and (thanks to the barista) two excellent coffees, we agreed that Tasca is rather like that other alley-dweller further up town, Mezze; a place for an undemanding, inexpensive nibble that isn't noodles. And atmosphere.

That was our afternoon in Vulcan Lane, but that's not the end of the Tasca story. The owners and their chef, Zeki Kizilata, have opened a bigger, styley brother in the new Nuffield St centre in Newmarket.

There the menu expands to cordero (lamb shoulder, basted with harissa and pomegranate molasses), zarzuela (fisherman's stew) and Madrid's famed cocido stew of pork knuckle, chorizo, paprika and chickpeas.

Might toddle over and see if the rioja's available by the glass.

Address: Upper Vulcan Lane City
Ph 309 6300
Shop 8, Nuffield Street, Newmarket
Ph 522 4443, www.tasca.co.nz
Open: 7 days, 7am-late
Cuisine: Spanish
From the tapas menu:
Crumbed, fried croquetas with chicken and nutmeg $8.90
Haba bean dip, lemon and red onion, hot bread $8.90
Mussels stuffed with ham, onion and parsley bechamel, crumbed and pan-fried $11.50
Wine: Restricted list
Vegetarian: Easily