Firefly* Tapas Kitchen and Lounge on Paradise

UPDATE:  This place moves and gets closed down a lot.  I'm not sure what current locations are open now.  It is a Las Vegas favorite despite a list of health violations longer than a Tolstoy novel.  Seriously though, it's worth the risk to your health.

VERDICT:  There is something for everyone here.  However, it just might be a little too trendy to go to on a Saturday night.

Tapas is/are....hey is tapas plural or singular?  Tapas are small dishes traditionally served with alcoholic beverages.  Basically, does anyone remember "grazing"?  It was a so-called fad in the 80's of going to a restaurant and only having a bunch of appetizers.  Well, this is grazing Spanish style.  I love it.  I always want to go grazing, but Greg thinks that every meal has to have a main course.  This way, Greg doesn't know what hit him.  He doesn't know he is grazing.  It's great, you get to try a bunch of different food.  Some of the dishes we tried included the bacon wrapped stuffed dates, which came highly recommended.  They were good and caused Greg to sound like a food critic when he said, "They ended with a lovely sweet note."  OK, OK, I added the word "lovely", but he really said "sweet note".  He's becoming a regular .... um, I now realize that I don't know the name of a single food critic.

We also had the ham and cheese croquettas.  Wow, they look like something you would get at Arby's but they taste like something that you would get in heaven.  The mushroom tart was also good, ending with a hearty note (I say stuff like that too.)  We also had some of someone's paella, which I loved, but Greg didn't because he couldn't really identify everything in it.  Some sort of fish threw him off I think, but it didn't taste fishy at all.

The problem with this place was that it is super trendy and we went on a Saturday night.  Crowded is all right, but I don't like restaurants that are designed to reverberate noise.  The place was loud.  I don't really like shouting at people just because they are sitting across the table.  I enjoy quieter atmospheres.  Perhaps the one downtown at the Plaza has a quieter design, I'll have to check it out.

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