Dahlia, a funky Midtown charmer from Boycott Bar owner Audrey Corley, has been packed like a sardine tin since it opened in September.
Opened: September 2023
Tapas has a distinguished but uneven history in the Valley. Well-reviewed taperías such as Lola Tapas and Sol y Sambra somehow failed to hang on, despite fan bases that seemed to adore them. It’s hard to see a similar fate awaiting Dahlia, a funky Midtown charmer from Boycott Bar owner Audrey Corley that’s been packed like a sardine tin since it opened in September. Set in the old Coronado Café cottage on Seventh Street, it has a tidy, 14-item menu that eats and reads with equal capacidad: crisp, blanched asparagus in a tangy tamarind-lime vinaigrette, sprinkled with pistachios ($14); grilled, chilled Argentine shrimp in a campanita-pepper cocktail sauce, greedily inhaled by all at the table ($18); a well-conceived charcuterie board ($36), with quince jam and truffled salami, that puts on a scrumptious little clinic in Spanish cheeses; sinfully supple lollipop lamb chops ($28) that you’ll want to nibble to the bone with swipes of mint yogurt and salsa roja; and our favorite of the night, sashimi-tender octopus carpaccio ($28), enlivened with pickled onions and Fresno chiles, rested over a pseudo mole smear (no cacao, but everything else). If there’s any culinary justice in the Valley, these tapas will stick around.
Wild Card: Fancy a splurge? Try on a tomahawk ribeye ($140) with salsa roja and chimichurri; or sip a paloma-like Matadora from the restaurant’s pleasingly baroque bar, made with orange tequila, grapefruit and yuzu liqueur ($14).
2221 N. Seventh St., 602-529-6616, dahliatapas.com
