Pamplona

A couple of weekends ago, I ate at Pamplona, a Spanish restaurant in the Flatiron district. To start, we had the Pan con Tomate with Jamon (pictured below). The bread was toasted nicely and the richness of the tomato combined with the ham reminded me of how good simple things really can be. As my main course, I had the Cochinillo (pictured above), which was confit of suckling pig with green leaf lettuce, shiitake mushrooms and an apple puree. Pork-anything is definitely my weakness and this pork dish was exceptional. The combination of the sweetness of the apple with the saltiness of the pork (especially the skin!) made the dish satisfying down to the last piece. My only qualm was that there wasn't enough sauce on the plate. My girlfriend had a Mahi-Mahi dish (the last picture below) that was good in its own right (I forget what exactly was in it since it was a special that night) - a good mixture of sour and salty, but I think the pork won that night. Simply put, I would order the pork again, but maybe not the Mahi-Mahi.

Overall, I would say that the experience was satisfying, but the service could have used a bit of improvement as there were times when we had to wait for a noticeable amount of time between courses and when trying to reach the attention of the waiters. With that said, I would still recommend going to Pamplona, but just remember to schedule more time for dinner.