Best Spanish Restaurant


Important: This article was last updated on September 21, 2005. Please call ahead to confirm hours, prices, dates and other information.

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La Barraca Tapas Bar and Café
115 S. 20th Ave., Hollywood, 954/925-0050; and 1831 N. Pine Island Road, Plantation, 954/693-9757; www.paellas.com

 Whenever a popular restaurant expands, especially to a second location four times the size of the first, it risks stretching talent too thin, compromising the food, losing touch with regular customers and losing customers altogether. None of that happened when La Barraca owner-chef Jorge Luis Fernandez took his menu to a 200-seat showroom in downtown Hollywood last May. Fernandez, the self-proclaimed "Dalí of the Kitchen" for his Salvador-style mustache, first won loyalists in Plantation for his restaurant's authentic Spanish cuisine, familial atmosphere and fiery flamenco show. The 49-seater there remains open under the personable management of his cousin Roberto Fernandez. La Barraca dos opened with the same spirit of the original but a much larger flamenco stage, a full bar and earthy décor reminiscent of a Spanish hacienda. The food is divino in both locales, from the hot and cold tapas (baby lamb chops, Manchego cheese and mushrooms sautéed with garlic) to the various paellas. There aren't enough restaurants celebrating the virtues of Spanish food in South Florida, but at least Fernandez has given us two great ones with La Barraca.