Tapas at Enrique Becerra, Sevilla

I read about this restaurant in every guide book that I had on Sevilla--Fodors, the Lonely Planet, the Rough Guide, Trip Adviser, Rick Steve's, you name it, this restaurant was touted in them.  T
here was something about the way they described the restaurant that put me off as a place where everyone in my travel party would be happy--I have an unadventurous eater who I really needed to find something for him to eat on the menu before we could really make it a viable option, even if that was just bread with olive oil and a dish of paella.  This did not seem to fit the bill when I read about it, but in the end, it was our overall favorite place that we ate amongst some very good options over the two weeks.

The first thing I got wrong was that the upstairs limited seating, limited menu restaurant is a very different place from the more spacious, more casual first floor tapas bar.  So it was quite easy to walk in off the street, after having failed at two previous restaurants to find a good fit, to get a seat.  We were then truly wowed by how inventively the tapas were composed--it was the first place that we ate in the two weeks we were in Andalucia that we ordered a second plate of a tapas.  That delicious.  We considered ordering a third round of a couple of things but we were just too full to be able to manage it--had we gone to the restaurant earlier in our Sevilla stay, we might have gone back--there were so many things on the tapas menu that we hadn't tried that we would have been very tempted to return.  Food that is fabulous, inspired, and yet still steeped in local tradition--highly recommended.