Opportunity Cost

As if competing in the crowded world of New York tapas weren't strenuous enough, the owners of Tasca opened it in quick succession with a second, neighboring restaurant. Tasca is a bright, white-finished sliver of a tapas bar with picture windows and Gaudíesque droops and curves; Central Kitchen, which abuts it via a plain door, offered a wide-ranging American menu in a cavernous, rustic space. Craig Wilson was chef at both until Tuesday, when the decision was made to shut and rethink the fledgling Central Kitchen. A manager said the new Central Kitchen, with a new chef and new décor, will make its debut in early June.

Tasca has a head start, having opened two months before Central Kitchen, but its ideas seem to have outpaced their execution. The distraction of running two restaurants couldn't have helped. Sitting at the triangular white bar, overhung by low-hanging light fixtures whose organic forms look like they're about to dribble into your plate, one might expect cooking along similarly modern lines. But the dishes are often ponderous, even when their concepts are sprightly.

The menu's two dozen tapas are more substantial than most — just a couple could make a meal — and include some unusual selections such as a generous portion of snails on toast. Twenty or more unusually tender black snails ($12) lie curled on and beside a pair of tough, useless slabs of toast. The snails themselves don't have much flavor, but they're cooked with snippets of bacon and darkly sweet figs, which rescue the dish from the dullness to which it otherwise seems doomed. Figs make themselves very welcome at Tasca, working their magic again in a cazuela of mild chorizo ($10). Instead of the common perking-up with sherry, this sausage is weighted down with balsamic vinegar, which bonds with the melting figs to form a sweet glue that glazes and complements the garlicky coins of meat. It's both inspired and delicious. But too often the inventiveness in the kitchen doesn't quite make up for the clumsiness on the plate.

Lamb skewers ($11) are tinged with cumin and lemon and served on a pyramid of very tasty chickpea mash that could be a dish in its own right. The lamb has good flavor, but an unseemly toughness; finger food shouldn't be hard to eat. Sangria makes an interesting braising liquid for a fatty, heavy beef rib ($11), sweet and winey and dominating the flavor palate more than your typical braising liquid, with beef and fruit unexpected but felicitous partners, while the accompanying sweet-potato pudding tastes like a rich, delicate refugee from a Southern kitchen. Only the ceviche ($9) is a real mistake: Both times I ordered it, the bowl of lime-soaked fish bits dotted with tomato were mealy and completely without taste, like a food stylist's prop. A handful of spiced popcorn served alongside makes a tasty, and authentically Latin American, consolation prize. Beyond the tapas, the restaurant offers just a few main courses, including two paellas. The one I sampled ($22) was a flavor-impoverished, grease-bound disappointment; I wound up picking out the reliably tasty chorizo, and leaving behind the dry chicken pieces and soggy rice.

Tasca serves 40 modestly priced Spanish wines, half by the glass, including Gotim Bru, a soft and lively bargain red blend ($10). For dessert, the torrijas ($7) are the way to go: like French toast, sugared, honeyed, custard-soaked bread served with sharp cinnamon ice cream. The crema Catalana ($7), though tastily capped with another round of those ubiquitous figs, is grainy, not creamy (I tried it twice), and tastes like it was made in a hurry.

While its neighbor is remodeled and reconfigured, Tasca will continue business as usual, but the barely four-month-old tapas bar is hardly ready to rest on its laurels. Opening restaurants is easier than running them well. There's definite potential at Tasca, which could be realized if some of the obvious effort poured into dreaming up clever concepts, here and next door, was spent on focusing what's already in place.

Tasca (130 Seventh Ave. South at 10th Street, 212-620-6815).