"Tapas-style dishes are just a ploy for restaurants to serve smaller plates and charge full price," a friend of mine said, commenting on the increasing number of "tapas-style" and "small plate" restaurants popping up in NYC. Barca is one of them. And while their brunch menu is definitely full price, their plates are anything but small.

Tucked beside The Grey Dog in Nolita, Barca feels rustically Spanish but somehow also modern, with cow hides decorating the backs of the booths, orange lighting, and tree stumps sticking out from walls. The table we sat at was small and a little cramped, but my roommate felt like a queen when she leaned back against the bristly animal skin behind her.

We started off our boozy brunch with the waitress-recommended prickly pear mimosa, which I haven't seen at any other brunch establishment. Fizzy and slightly gritty, the pear softened the bitterness of champagne in a pleasant and refreshing morning beverage.

I ordered the steak and eggs, which came with a side of fingerling potatoes. My two eggs were cooked perfectly to my liking - runny, but not soupy. The steak was tender and well-seasoned, with just the right amount of crusty bite to play off the softness of the meat. The potatoes were also surprisingly delicious. Usually I find home fries or breakfast potato wedges to be over-salted or soggy. The fingerling potatoes were cooked with the skin left on, just the way I like them. When biting into the potato, the skin broke with a satisfying tension, while the inside of the potato was soft and fluffy. Without any visible seasoning, I wondered how such a boring vegetable could be such a pleasure to my palate. I resisted asking the waitress how the chefs got that bite from the potato skin.

My roommate ordered the short rib sandwich. Her plate was much smaller than mine but with a much more refined plating presentation. Pieces of bread and fried onion were stacked artistically above a mound of soft pork rib, braised in a smooth gravy. There was quite a lot of meat on the otherwise small plate, and we agreed that more bread and twice as many of those irresistible fried onions would have balanced the large amount of pork on the plate.

Sometime during the meal the waitress convinced us to get another drink (at $12 a pop, this wasn't an easy persuasion), and we both got the rosé sangria, another boozy brunch beverage that I haven't seen anywhere else. The beautiful color of the sangria reflected the delicacy of the drink, which was tart and sweet. The rosé sangria was not overpowering like red sangria can be for brunch, and not as syrupy as white sangria.

We left Barca with a lighter wallet and an even lighter head - those drinks were not weak! - and enjoyed a tipsy Saturday walk through Nolita and Soho. Barca was a perfect place to celebrate an occasion but perhaps wouldn't be a local haunt with those prices.