Contrary to what professionals or podcast producers might have you believe, it's extremely easy to identify a sociopath. They stand still on escalators, often taking up the whole thing, and they say things like "I know a great little tapas place near here."
Alas, these people are everywhere, comprising a sufficiently large proportion of the city's numbers that tapas spots continue to proliferate like overpriced weeds served on obnoxious square plates. Yaffa Cafe, a not-tapas spot that closed to widespread sadness last October, will be turned into a god damn Portuguese small plates (tapas) restaurant, possibly as soon as July! Because the world East Village needs more sockless men gesticulating over a gram of food at 4 in the afternoon.
DNAinfo spoke to the owners—who also helm St. Dymphnas, a perfectly fine bar with an array of stick-to-your-ribs dishes—about their plans for the space.
What do we know? The restaurant will be called Taberna, and it will be "food focused"—a promising start. Taberna will have the atmosphere of a "European bar/cafe," and serve "small and shareable Portuguese dishes like caldo verde—a traditional potato-based soup," never mind that soup has the distinction of being perhaps the least shareable food outside of maybe popsicles.
The backyard—partially to blame for the DOH shutdown—will be turned into a garden, and the whole space will be gutted since it currently has several layers of old floors, apparently.
If all goes as planned, Taberna will open in July. If all goes WELL, its owners will rethink this idea and open a bar with $3 pickle backs staffed entirely by good-natured orangutans. THAT is what this city needs right now.
