bota. tapas & paella bar

Desayuno en Geary (redux), Parte 32

http://botasf.com/


Place: bota.[1]tapas & paella bar

Location: 490 Geary Street (at Taylor Street)

Hours: open for breakfast & "Brunch" (but I only saw the one Specialty Breakfast menu) Monday - Friday at 6:30am and Saturday - Sunday at 7:00am

Meal:  Spanish Tortilla[2] ~ eggs, potatoes, onions, peppers, tomato toast; and a glassa jugo de toronja

(I have no idea whether Miss Cassidy[3] liked drinking wine straight out of a goatskin bag or if she liked Spanish breakfastary food items, but it is the beginning of Autumn and this song seemed appropriate enough for me. 

Now if the Gipsy Kings also did a version of "Autumn Leaves"... )


I happened by a new-ish restaurant a few weeks ago (apparently open only since the beginning of December 2016). I liked the looks of their Specialty Breakfast menu well enough and figured I would check them out in the future. Who says the future never arrives?! The future is today, my friend, and I had my breakfast at bota. tapas & paella bar. This is one of the house restaurants in the Warwick Hotel[4].

I like that they open up very early for a downtown location (however, I expect that might just be to attract/steal the neighboring hotels tourista business; even so, this is still a very nice early opening time). There is spacious seating for about fifty to sixty people (where most of the tables are for two). They have a really nice space and design, and there is a large wall-display of vinos españoles (hence the name bota.).

(Sorry, they did not offer a breakfast paella on the menu. Even if they did, a vegetarian/Vegan version of paella is just called "rice".)


Not that I really needed to change my mind in any way (I had gone there predetermined to order the dish that I had), but they did offer a few otras buenas ideas:

Picaso[ sic; now how the h*ck can you mispel the name of one of the most famous Spaniards of the 20th Century?! The Spanish must still be p*ssed that he liked living in ese c*ndenado Francia better. ] Omelet ~ select three: peppers, onions, mushroom, tomato, Cheddar, Jack cheese, ham, bacon, smoked salmon; served with potatoes (just my luck and this would come out with three eyes and four ears in it);

Broken Eggs ~ over easy eggs, chorizo (which I would have ochenta-y-seis-ed, of course), spinach, house cut fries;

Poached Toast ~ poached egg, house bread toast, avocado spread, olive oil, sea salt (I assume that this is their version of the ubiquitous avocado toast);

or possibly

Warwick French Toast ~ home made [ sic; with a space between the two words (even if it is really restaurant-made) ] brioche bread; add one: bananas, strawberries, blueberries (And what have we learned about these fruits in the past, children? Bananas are the only actual botanical berry of the three.).

While this dish may not have been quite as exciting and breakfastarily exemplary as last weekend's Fried Green Tomato Benedict (trust me, not many dishes are), I always enjoy a breakfast that incorporates potatoes as a main ingredient in the dish. This was a very well prepared version of this dish. The potatoes were abundantly present in the omelette/frittata thing; they were nice and thinly sliced (think like as in an au gratin kinda dish). I liked that the roasted sweet red peppers were on the side; I ended up cutting them into small strips/pieces and adding them to forkfuls/bites of the tortilla. The tomato toast was something like garlic bread with a light tomato sauce on it; I liked it, too.

I really have no idea what bota. might have had to offer in the way of any condimentary supplementation; I did not bother to ask. I just used some of my own 
Old St. Augustine Snake Bite Datil Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Greg & Cindy! [Yes, those two, again.]) on one half of the tortilla and some Hot Licks® Serrano 
Hot Sauce (Thanks, Brian! [who does not get hardly as many "Thanks!" as he deserves]) on the other half of the tortilla.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Tortilla Española ~ 6.7

___________________

1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/etymological pointer of the day, número uno:

The Spanish word "bota" (a traditional leather wineskin, typically made from goatskin) comes from Late Latin word "butta/buttis" (meaning "cask").

Now, even though I can not find any corroborating evidence to support this, I am assuming that the same Latin word root is also associated with "bodega" (originally meaning a "wine cellar") and "boutique".

There is this bit of confusing information from Mary Ann Webster's (since 1828) Dictionary:

Apothecary, bodega, and boutique may not look very similar, but they are all related both in meaning and in origin. Each of these words can be traced back to a Latin word for "storehouse" (apotheca), and each one refers in English to a retail establishment of some sort. Although bodega initially meant "a storehouse for wine", it now most commonly refers to a grocery store in an urban area, especially one that specializes in Hispanic groceries. Boutique has also taken on new meanings: its first sense in English ("a small retail store") is still current, but it now may also denote "a small company that offers highly specialized products or services". Of the three words, apothecary has changed the least; it has gone from referring solely to the person who sells drugs or medicines to also naming the store where such goods are sold.

(See, this kinda obfuscatory stuff is why I always preferred Ginger Webster over Mary Ann Webster.)

2. Unlike its less-sophisticated Mexican cousin, an actual tortilla española does not mean a type of thin, unleavened flatbread, but is usually more of an omelette/frittata kinda dish.

Tortilla de patatas or tortilla de papas is a very common Spanish tapas dish.

Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day (and taken directly from this morning's restaurant), número dos:

3. http://evacassidy.org/

4. Back when this hotel used to still be known as 
the Regency (circa late 80's - early 90's), I knew a guy (Hey, Abu Johnson!) that was part-owner of the larger of the two restaurants there. The restaurant used to be called Regina's (this is just a coincidence, the name of the restaurant did not come from the name of the hotel; Regina happened to be the main owner/chef-person behind the establishment) back then.