Mercat.(Restaurant review)

This new tapas restaurant suffered a delay prior to its debut, so, on a recent evening, not long after its doors finally opened, it seemed like a celebration in the packed dining room. A slim young man, dressed in a sharp suit with his shirt unbuttoned to his solar plexus, strode in, blowing kisses left and right; meanwhile, the sommelier--also cousin to the owner, helmer of the ham-and-cheese station, and sometime manager--instructed a couple of tables on how to drink, Catalan-style, from a two-spouted flask, holding it high and pouring the wine in a thin stream into his mouth. Perhaps overly invigorated by the lesson, one young woman leapt from her table and exhorted the diners at another to try her wine. They politely declined.

The space--narrow and high-ceilinged, with exposed brick walls, an elegant mezzanine lined with wine racks, and a tiled partition around the open kitchen--doesn't exactly dampen the noise, and the Euro-frat-party atmosphere might turn away some diners. But it's possible to find reasons to enter the fray. The serious missteps--skewers of bitter snails, absent the promised accompaniment of chorizo; tough razor clams that belied the commonly held belief that bacon, here in the form of a vinaigrette, makes ...