Barcelona

Ideal for eating out with friends, appetizer-sized servings of outstanding Spanish flavors prepared with the highest quality local ingredients and a privileged bird’s eye view of the town and bay, including the nightly fireworks display. Sea breezes refresh the charmingly casual terrace, while the dining room is air conditioned.

Owners European-trained chef Bill Carballo from Chicago, and his wife Yesenia, a Vallarta native, go out of their way to ensure every guest leaves this homey spot happy, promising good-sized portions of top-notch food at reasonable prices. Reknowned for their Valenciana and seafood paella, melt-in-your-mouth Angus beef, and mixed seafood grill with fresh lobster tail, fish filet, mussels, shrimp, and saffron rice, traditional Spanish-style sangria aptly accompanies.

Trying two or three tapas per person is a delicious adventure – grilled vegetables with caramelized red onions, raspberry vinaigrette and balsamic reduction, grilled eggplant with warm goat cheese and homemade tomato sauce, grilled garlic mushrooms, and sizzing shrimp in extra virgin olive oil with spicy pepper among possibilities. Keeping things fresh, several daily tapas specials like grilled scallops and portobello and shitake mushrooms in two exqusitely creamy sauces.

Actually, every sauce here is out of this world, as is the full-bodied clam chowder and fried banana in hot caramel sauce with ice cream. Intelligent wine list with Spanish, Chilean, French and Mexican vintages.