When my wife Jun and I visited Sushi Sho last year, Jun asked the sushi master Keiji Nakazawa if he has any favorite restaurant in NYC. Nakazawa-san mentioned Bartolo, a Spanish restaurant in West Village, as a place that he enjoys going to from time to time. As we hadn’t been to the restaurant before, Jun and I decided that we will visit Bartolo on a trip to the city in the near future. It finally happened last month where we met up with a close friend for a party of three. Oh man, Nakazawa-san was spot on; Bartolo is the new Spanish benchmark in our culinary journey. We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner at the restaurant, and ended up ordering a lot more dishes than we anticipated.

The menu at Bartolo consists of a number of pintxos (small snacks), followed by smaller and then larger dishes. As usual when dining at a Spanish restaurant, we ordered a plate of jamon iberico which often gives us a fairly reliable idea on how good the restaurant is. The hand cut jamon at Bartolo immediately got our attention for its more or less perfectly chewy meat. Good thing that I ordered a glass of sherry to go along with it! The other pintxos that we ordered, a plate of anchovy on top of butter, was also delicious and even won over Jun who doesn’t typically take anchovy very well. Another standout dish at the restaurant is a rustic Huevos Fritos con Patatas y Gambas. Of course, who wouldn’t love fried eggs, potatoes and shrimp in garlic? Yet, the kitchen at Bartolo seems to have executed the dish to perfection. In the middle of our meal, a server dropped by and highly recommended fried soft shell crab, adding that the dish was only on the menu for one month. I am very glad that we took the bait as the soft shell crab, on top of Russian potato salad, was indeed a thing of beauty; Jun, a soft shell crab enthusiast, absolutely loved it, too.

The larger dishes were no less impressive. We wondered if the secreto pork would’ve tasted even better without coming in fried Milanese fashion but it was nonetheless fabulous. The hearty Madrid style tripe (Callos a la Mardileña) was also a dish worth ordering. To me, however, the star of the dinner belonged to the rack of suckling lamb and pomme puree. The lamb’s juicy flavor and exceptional texture made me wonder if this was the best lamb dish I’ve had in the past couple of years, period! As you can see, we have definitely ordered more than would’ve been proper for three people, yet we couldn’t resist the temptation of ordering the cheesecake dessert. And yes, the cheesecake was absolutely worth it even though I was beyond stuffed by the time the dessert quickly disappeared. It didn’t taste overly sweet and literally melted in my mouth.

For its greatness, I was very surprised that Bartolo isn’t one of the harder restaurants to get a reservation, especially since the dining room isn’t that large in the first place. That said, the dining room was more or less packed during the peak dinner hours on a Friday, so I would still plan ahead with a reservation. The charming, Old World vibe of the bar and dining room makes you feel like you are dining at a secret restaurant somewhere in Madrid or Barcelona. Of course, there is plenty of beverages on the list from cocktails to sherries to wines; while the Spain-focused wine list had representations from diverse regions of the Iberia, I did think it could be slightly expanded with more choices on style and price point. We have already been talking about making a return trip to Bartolo on our next trip to NYC. I’m not sure when that will be at the moment, but we will definitely need to bring a few more friends to try as many of the dishes on the menu as possible. If we end up moving back to the city one day, I know for sure this will be a place where we will become regulars.

KenScale: 8.5/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.5/10)

Address: 310 W 4th St, New York, NY 10014

Website: https://www.bartolonyc.com/

Reservation on OpenTable