Barcelona Restaurant & Wine Bar

The vision for this upscale casual is laid out clearly in the forward of its cookbook: “Yankee Connecticut might be the last place you’d expect a tapas bar and restaurant to be successful, but [the owners] have proved that tasty, quickly prepared Spanish-inspired food … can be a hit anywhere.” That was five years and four locations ago. Here, “chef-driven” means  that about a third of the menu is tailored by the chef at each location. And chefs make face time with guests a priority with in-house cooking classes.