*This was an invited food tasting session.

The narrow lanes of Club Street and Ann Siang have long housed charming little bars, eateries and shops offering quaint curated goods and services.

A little over a year ago, My Little Tapas Bar (MLTB), with its authentic Spanish tapas and cocktails concept, joined their folds.

Part of the My Little Spanish Place group, with the opening of the new Boat Quay branch, My Little Tapas Bar has recently added an additional ‘gintoneria’ aspect to take the authentic Spanish bar exerience to the next level.

Guests can ‘make-their-own’ gin cocktails, so to speak – choosing a type of gin (S$18++ for regular / S$24++ for premium) to be mixed with three ‘botanicals’, like cinnamon, nutmeg, lemongrass, strawberry and many more.

We started the night with some Jamon Serrano (S$7) and Manchego cheese (S$8), accompanied with some light and crispy baguette. Both were pretty good – I particularly liked the hard, savoury goat cheese.

Personally I prefer the oiler Iberico types to Serrano but still, there’s just something awesome about Spanish ham.

I guess its the long duration (~1-6 years, one of the head chefs Maria from Salamanca, said) of curing the meat.

Plus, here they even hand (mind you, not machine) carve it for you! So quaint.

Some other small plates that we tried included the Croquetas de Jamon (S$10), which were fried jamon-stuffed creamy croquettes with aioli sauce. This was quite nice but a bit too light for me as I like rich, exploding flavours.

The Chorizo a la Plancha (S$14) was more to my taste, a montaditos (tapas on bread, this seems more common in Spain than here) of fresh grilled chorizo with caramelized onions and manchego cheese on a slice of baguette. The manchego balanced the sharpness of the chorizo with a light, savoury creamy taste.

Then came one of my favourites for the night, the Gambas Picantes (S$14).

I really liked this as the prawns were fresh and springy, and full of flavour, which I suppose came from cooking in the brilliant sauce of olive oil, garlic, chili and smoked paprika. Mmmmm.

I enjoyed the Sardinas en escabeche (S$14) too – sardines cured in-house with vinegar, olive oil and smoked paprika served on toast bread and a dash of pepper puree.

The sardines were moist and tasty without being too salty or powdery, as sardines sometimes can be.

I’m not too sure how I feel about MLTB’s Patatas Bravas (S$10), which had a different spin than the usual, choosing to slice the potatoes really thinly such that it resembles potato chips.

I might have preferred it if the potatoes were slightly thicker, but this was nevertheless good to eat. The devil’s aioli sauce that was drizzled on it was delicious and on the spicy side, but guess they don’t give it a name like that for nothing.

We also had Albondigas (S$12), homemade beef and pork meatballs in a rich tomato-based sauce. This was alright but pretty pedestrian.

The dessert was really good! We had the Tarta de Chocolate (S$12 for a usual portion, this was the tasting size), a 3-layer chocolate tart with homemade meringue milk ice cream – which had delightful hints of lemon and other citrusy flavours that really complemented the creaminess.

This was a well matched accompaniment to the rich chocolate tart, and made for a wonderful close to the meal.

The warm service and the tapas dishes offered did give me a bit of an authentic tapas bar feeling, much like the ones I had visited in Spain around… 7 years ago.

I don’t think they can quite recreate the rowdiness and vibrancy of some of these places here (not too sure it would fly in Singapore anyway), but My Little Tapas Bar does have a nice warm vibe where one can go to kick back and relax after work over some sharing plates and drinks.

There is something special and bonding about sharing communal plates of food, I kid you not.

Also FYI, Wednesdays are Ladies’ Night, so ladies are entitled to 1 free sangria for every order (limited to 1 drink per lady per night). And for their daily happy hour from 5 to 8pm, in true Spanish tapas tradition, every drink order is served with a free montadito, which changes from day to day.

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And, if you use The Entertainer app at MLTB, you can redeem offers like ‘two complimentary tapas for every two of equal or greater value purchased’!

I got to try The Entertainer Singapore app at the session as well – thought it was quite user friendly, with pretty good deals – (it claims but I didn’t count) over 800 ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offers for restaurants, bars, cafes and other leisure and travel activities in Singapore.

This app retails at S$60, but if you go out to eat often, it should be pretty easy to redeem that amount and much more back when you dine at the The Entertainer Singapore partner establishments.

They’ve also updated the app with two additional features that are pretty cool. You can select offers to ping to your friends, who will have 10 days to accept the offer. After that, they just have to download the Entertainer Singapore app and use it before it expires, at the end of the year!

The other feature is the link to Uber – each restaurant listing has a button that tells you the estimated time required and cost to get to this destination, and if you are fine with this you can press to call an Uber taxi to take you there! Isn’t that just awesome yo.

If you’re interested in getting The Entertainer, you can use the promo code “2015ALVIN” to get 10% off at checkout.

For more drinks and catch up sessions with friends (maybe at MLTB?), while saving money too! I’d like to see more of my favourite (healthy-ish) food places as partners, but the list is currently quite long already – including popular restaurants like Au Petit Salut, L’Entrecote, Bank Bar + Bistro, Cafe Iguana and even casual eateries such as Yoshinoya and Ben & Jerry’s. Go check it out!

*Update: Uber is now offering a free ride for first time users (up to S$20)! Use the promo code ‘TheEntertainerSG’ to redeem this. Valid for UberX and UberExec vehicles only.