Tucked into a little corner on Burdick Street within the Kalamazoo Mall, Fandango Tapas Bistro provides a mildly exotic night-spot for various twenty-something year olds to go out and sample Spanish cuisine.
First and foremost, Fandango is a night-hopping sort of place. There is no lunch crowd, as they are open for 5 hours, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday. There is a big, semi-circle bar, tiled in the style of a Spanish ranch, which takes up most of the space. Little fern plants stand guard next to the liquor rack and a lonely LCD television keeps the single avid sports watcher’s attention. Orange-red, swipe-painted walls are decorated with various, generic, Spanish covered paintings there to evoke a sense of exotic night life. Low lights hang and there are tall-tables all around. The place has energy, decent cocktails, and a quick and helpful serving staff that guides you on your little culinary adventure into Hispania.
Tapas are a finicky food—you get a little for a lot. By no means is Fandango cheap. Prices range from $6 to $12 for tapas dishes, and servers will recommend that patrons order 2 to 3 dishes per person throughout the night. While it isn’t necessary to follow their advice, eaters are going to want to take a smattering of this and that from the menu—this is the devilish thing about these small dishes— eyes and stomach not leaving them with much of a choice. 4 different dishes and a dessert to split can easily end up running to about $40 without tip.
But that is the price one pays for intimacy. As previously mentioned, the whole place is packed into a corner of the Kalamazoo Mall. It is a black-Lego block of an awning that has nibble-sized-section of street right down the way from Rustica. According to the owners, the place seats 87 individuals at maximum capacity, but don’t imagine ‘comfortably’ being thrown in there afterwards. The place is built more like a coffee joint in downtown Chicago, with the bar taking up about half of the floor space and the kitchen smashed in further behind it. Whether you like it or not, you are going to become familiar with that 25-year old law student sitting behind you, her 3-minute jogging routine, and her various previous flings she’s had over the past month. The 28-year old bachelor across from her is about as fascinating.
That closeness follows through past the social bubble popping, however, and communicates through the food. The idea of tapas is grabbing little bites of everything. Remember when you went to the buffet as a kid: grabbed a buffalo wing here, a taquito there, and then plopped that pizza puff that looked way too tempting sitting in all that grease right in the middle of the plate on top of all the other food you got? Imagine that, except with goat cheese, chicken, seafood, and other nibbles of Spanish cuisine, served in individual skillets or bowls just a little bit larger than a man’s hand. One should go here in an attempt at satisfying their palate rather than their stomach, so don’t expect to loosen any belt notches.
Which is perfect, really; bloating would ruin a meal at Fandango. Each dish, such as the patatas bravas for example; sautéed potatoes, garlic and onions, topped with a perky pepper sauce that sparks on your lips and the tip of your tongue, is designed to be a snippet of flavor and texture. Imagine potato chips dipped in bacon grease then sprinkled with a hot-pepper sauce.
The meal will hinge around the order and collection of tapas—and that was what remains concerning about Fandango. The aforementioned patatas bravas are hearty, and one could nibble on them as the night goes on—but other dishes disappointed. The cheesy roasted eggplant, thinly sliced eggplant served with a delicate cheese crust and a red sauce on the side, is filling at a first, but ends up tasting a bit too much like sit-down pizza, as well as being a bit rubbery. Is it also so salty that it may end up leading eaters to gulp down water like a cowboy in a Spaghetti western just in from the desert.
And while the habanero chicken looks intimidatingly enticing, its Scovilles just fail to sizzle—tasting a bit more like sweetly glazed Asian chicken from your local Chinese-place.
The mango shrimp cocktail, what is basically a bowl of shrimp smothered in your average cocktail sauce, is presented charmingly in a glass goblet with bits of mango thrown in with and a bit of a lime zest for flavor. It wasn’t over complicated but served as nice talking food, occasionally biting at you with a fruity after taste.
But talking food is the deal at Fandango Bistro. With spill-over from Rustica, and only five hours of kitchen time, everything is placed upon the diner rather than the restaurant. This is a place where one creates their food experience for themselves with the list of over 40 tapas on a Friday night, then either goes over to one of the bars that is open later, or continues on with whatever other late-night plans they have for the evening. One takes a bite, and sucks in the atmosphere and continues speaking with whichever guest they have brought along. That said, don’t go to Fandango alone. This is a place for the quick in and quick out. A few spicy bites here and a few sweet bites there, coupled with spicier and sweeter conversation with the crowd whom you brought in with you. Where a restaurant like Rustica or Manga Manga may invite you to sit down, fill up, and stay awhile; Fandango is the place that tells you to go to the bar, whet your appetite, and get on with the rest of your night.
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