The great Australian tapas interpretation.
Good things come in small dishes.
If ever a food was lost in translation, it's tapas. In their Spanish homeland, tapas are a wonderful array of varied foods casually served at bars. The portions are small, the prices are low and the quality almost always outstanding.
Sometimes eaten standing, or often on a bar stool, tapas are always accompanied by a drink and conversation.
They're served on toothpicks and the number of little wooden sticks on the plate determines the total cost. At a few euros each, it's not much. Advertisement: Story continues below Bean tapas.
Bean tapas.
Bring the concept to the southern hemisphere, open a restaurant, paint "tapas" in big letters on the front door and that's often where the similarities end.
Gone are the toothpicks, replaced by knives, forks and starched white napkins.
Tempting open displays of olives, jamon, tortillas and bowls of anchovies are nowhere to be seen. Instead, diners select from a menu with prices that would make a Spaniard reach for the sherry in shock.
Dishes emerge from the kitchen and any figure up to $20 a portion is commonplace.
And kitchen systems mean dishes have set sizes. Therefore, a party of four diners ordering seared scallops on black pudding can find itself with a dish of three molluscs.
At Spanish chef Miguel Maestre's new tapas joint, Argyle Bazar, at The Rocks in Sydney, a highlight item — cones of rather firm Serrrano jamon filled with solid potato puree and topped with a quail egg — is offered in a fancy rack with three serves.
It all initiates that undignified dining game of: "You have it ... No, you have it."
In Spain, tapas fill the gap between the end of work and dinner, which rarely begins before 9pm and often much later. It's a tradition deeply embedded in the country's culture. A tradition that maintains communities and friendships and works in favour of sobriety. They eat while they drink and never end the night in the gutter.
Some concepts move across the globe with ease. Tapas aren't among them.
Australian kitchen and costing systems don't lend themselves to the idea.
Worse than all of the above, it's easy to do tapas with a group of friends, order quite a few dishes, pay a reasonably hefty bill and begin thinking about buying a burger on the way home.
Tapas are appetisers before dinner. We've elevated them to dinner without changing portion sizes, given them prices to match and it doesn't work.
In Spain, tapas are evolving at the top end, with many of the best chefs — Ferran Adria of El Bulli restaurant among them — opening so-called gastrobars and serving dishes of extraordinary invention.
You can only marvel at how that may end up being adopted in the great Australian tapas interpretation.
http://images.theage.com.au/2010/12/01/2074184/tapas1-420x0.jpg
5 Answers
Hehe, that's so true. 'Tapas', or 'pintxos' as we call them in Euskadi, are not meant to be served on tables with fancy napkins, accompanied with a price tag that makes your head spin.. Even though you can easily replace a whole meal with them, they are not meant to be: they are appetizers. Lots of people take a break from work at noon, for example, eat a couple 'pintxos de tortilla', drink a beer, and head back to work.
There's also room for excellence in pintxos as you said, and in Euskadi it is very typical to hold contests where different bars compete for the informal 'title' of the best 'pintxo' of the city, or even of the province (several winners of the contests held at my home town). There are some 'gourmet' bars as well where the 'pintxos' are more elaborate than the usual 'tortilla de patatas' or 'jamón ibérico' -normally the ones that win those contests- and the price tags are closer to 5 eur/each, although they remain true to the spirit of any other bar: you usually serve yourself or order the pintxos directly at the bar, you eat standing or sitting on a stool, and you usually clean yourself with paper napkins and throw them to the floor (that usually conditions the level of cleanliness of Spanish bars too) 
Delicious!!!
They don't have tapas around here as far as I know, and I don't think anyone would pay $1 for something on a toothpick. Street vendors sell various fried and barbequed things for around 50 cents.
Various fried things: patties of potato with peas and carrots, bananas, fish wrapped in plantain dough, french fries , hot dogs, hamburgers
Various babrbecued things: corn on the cob, beef, chicken, or sausage with vegetables on skewers, chicken pieces
At the little stalls, you can get rice and menestra or soup as well. You can get a whole meal for a buck or two.
Tapas also vary in Spain, there are places where you get the tapa free with your drink.
In Madrid this is usually a small dish or plate with for example a piece of cheese, some olives, chips...
but go to Almeria and the area , omg, you have three beers and you have had lunch!!! All included in the price of the beer!
This would be one tapa, jejej, and yes, it is F R E E !!
I agree with what ray said. I love tapas and pinxos and there are tapas restaurants in London. But they don't understand what tapas are and people go there for dinner and pay a fortune. I simply will NOT pay £4.25 for a small portion of patatas bravas !!
If dim sum or sushi can be done to reasonable standards in London, why can't the same be true for tapas?
So the up shot of it is that I just have to fly off to Spain (San Sebastian) every so often and gorge myself on the lovely morsels... 
