La Nacional, Revisited

For a veryvery belated birthday dinner, I decided to take LTS to the very same place I’d taken StB for her birthday lunch.  LTS and I share a love of good paella, so it seemed fitting; when I read, just the day before we were set to go, that La Nacional was having money problems and might be closing down, I was even more eager to spend some money there. 

We started with the seafood salad.

While the seafood was very fresh tasting, and I loved the abundance of octopus, LTS and I agreed that the dish was less oomph than we’d have wanted.  It was a nice, if plain, start to our meal.

I’d missed this last time, which Mr. Levine listed in his review as “the open faced Spanish breakfast sandwich of [his] dreams” – with an endorsement like that, how could I pass this up?  While the tosta choricera‘s chorizo smelled and looked suspiciously like hot dogs, I have to admit that I found this quite tasty.  Not sure if I’d classify it as a dish of my dreams (I was just talking to someone about this: I need to post about the food items in my dreams- I have certain food memories that I relive over and over again for love of the memory!), but it was definitely very tasty.

Next came our entrees, with paella landing first.  We split everything, of course.  And the paella was even better than I remembered.  I mean, seriously.  Crispy edges, succulent rice that maintained its individual grain-ness (not to say it was grainy, just that each grain of rice was individual, but not hard, juicy without melting into each other), but bursting with total flavor.  Pow.  In your face.  I love this paella and I will keep going back for more. 

Though StB had certainly enjoyed her arroz negra perfectly last time, we opted instead to try the fideua, a dish I ate with some frequency in Spain, but haven’t had since then – almost 3 years ago.  The toasted noodle strands actually wound up being a bigger hit with LTS than with me, though I liked it plenty – the crunchy strands with the creamy mayo-sauce, and the crusty edges… yum!!!  But we did find ourselves eating more of the dish in front of us, which happened to be paella for me, and fideua for LTS 🙂 

Yvo says: Once again, I highly recommend this place.  Over and over again.  I can’t stress it enough.  Service was brusque, and water near-impossible to get refilled; the place was pretty busy, actually- but none of that matters.  This is all about the food, baby.
highly recommended

Happy eating!!!