New tapas bar Ocho has got your number

It's the number of wives the owner has. It's the cosmic, infinite loop that brings the past and future together in kismet. It's the quantity of lives expended in the process of turning a Technicolor hot-dog hole into a sepia-toned den of romance.

Ask Zach Harjo and Gelsey Hanson, owners of Ocho, Ballard's new Market Street nightspot, what the number eight means to them, and you're likely to get eight different answers on eight different days, none of which is true.

So here's what it should mean to you: It's the minimum number of tapas you should try. It's the number of glasses of sangría you'll want to drink. It's the number of days in a week you'll want to return -- if that were possible.

Over the last several months, Harjo and Hanson have quietly transformed the former site of Matt's Gourmet Hot Dogs into a sexy tapas bar that is luring crowds from the well-worn Ballard Avenue bar circuit over to the western reaches of Market Street, where Vans-sporting hipsters are seldom known to tread.

But tread they will for the rare late-night bite in Ballard. Served until midnight, the menu was inspired by the couple's backpacking travels through Spain, where they fell in love with the concept of tapas that are actually priced like tapas (not $15 "small plates"), using a few simple, knockout ingredients.

We're talking mushrooms in a sherried cream sauce on crispy little toasts, topped with fresh arugula, for $5; dates stuffed with blue cheese and pancetta ($4); white anchovies and roasted bell peppers skewered onto an artichoke heart ($4); and clams with chorizo, garlic and white wine topping out at $6. Even in their most basic moments, like when quince paste meets a slice of Manchego cheese, a dusting of cinnamon turns the whole thing into something you would give a thief your wallet for rather than have him steal out of your mouth.

Running the tiny kitchen are chef Colby Chambers, formerly of Canlis, and sous-chef Kailee Eck, who can still be found working the pantry at Wallingford's Tilth. At Ocho, they've created an ever-changing menu using a combination of Spanish imports and local greenmarket findings. It's nothing revolutionary if you've ever had tapas in Spain. But considering the goal here, that's a good thing.

Harjo brings the brains (and an occasionally showy Tom Cruise bottle spin) to the bar. If the muddled sangría tastes familiar, it's because you've had it at La Carta de Oaxaca, where he crafted it as their bartender. It's joined on Ocho's cocktail menu by a white sangría and the Sagrada Familia, sangría made with pear brandy and pink cava (see, you need three glasses already just to try each one).

He also created El Picador, a martini glass filled with vodka, maraschino liquor and cucumber that becomes a changing sunset of colors as a beet speared by a sprig of rosemary slowly bleeds into white.

It's a nod to the drink's namesake: the plucky Spanish fellow responsible for inciting bulls with pestering stabs before they charge mercilessly into the fighting ring. The image of one comestible seeping into another has never been so evocative, or so intoxicating. That being said, there's probably another number you should remember here: the one for your taxi ride home.