First time I went to Kaya's was as a participant of a belly dancing group run by a local adult school teacher slash Chatham mom at the time. Small BYOBs like Kayas are usually dark, black holes to me because I have a serious case of Celiac's disease. Health-nut hipster I am not. Wheat gluten literally wears away at my insides (I'm not using "literally" figuratively here). So I tend to stay away from tiny, owner/chef restaurants. A chef's job is hard enough on any given night. They don't need a needy diner to boot. But I shouldn't have waited. The dinner Mr. Hawthorne of Kaya's presented was amazing. My meal was made just for me, with many of the similar ingredients to what the other diners were having. It was just scrumptious. I cleared my plate. Then I got up and did some belly dancing, in a room of mostly middle-aged white women. Fun times. Sorry to say that Kaya's just announced that they are closing, and some other outfit is coming to take over their lease. Unfortunately, it is a restaurant where I probably won't bother eating, as many of the traditional items contain mucho gluten. La Tez will be a tapas restaurant. Not familiar with tapas? It's basically fancy snack food to munch on while you drink. The main point of a tapas place is to drink (and chat. But mostly to drink). But here's where it gets interesante: La Tez is a Bring-your-own-boozle (not fighting the bottle vs. booze war here) establishment. The restaurant will provide the margarita mix ingredients (no alcohol therein) and we the customer are to provide the tequila. Which, as it so happens, contains 0% gluten. Which makes it one of my most preferred liqueurs. Which I had too much of last month to celebrate my birthday... Anyhoo! Here's what wikipedia has to say about the origin of "tapas:" The word "tapas" is derived from the Spanish verb tapar, "to cover". According to The Joy of Cooking, the original tapas were the slices of bread or meat which sherry drinkers in Andalusian … [Read more...]