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Now that summer's here, many of us like to eat a little lighter and stay out a little later. Fulfilling these desires are several new supper clubs that specialize in "small plates" -- tapas that aren't Spanish but come from all corners of the world, wherever the chef's imagination roams.

Confidential is the leader of this global tapas pack. Its chef is Chris Walsh, who showed great promise at California Cuisine and later at his own Cafe W, both in Hillcrest. Now Walsh has resurfaced at this atmospheric Gaslamp lounge and is no longer merely promising -- he has achieved liftoff. His grazing menu offers something for every taste, from the barely legal blonde at the bar, nibbling spiced cashews behind her Cosmo, to the culinary adventurer looking for cuisine, not a scene.

The restaurant occupies a historic brick building with Roman arches supporting the windows. Giant round chandeliers hang overhead, lending the effect of a chic, updated '70s disco (minus the spinning lights). Seating is on comfortable white leatherette couches and square ottomans along the window's edge and at a high white banquette facing tall barstools along the side-wall, opposite the long bar and a large blue screen pendant from the soaring ceiling.

There are several DVD screens around the room: At our first visit (which coincided with a "handbag show" by a local young designer), the one nearest us ran a silent documentary that depicted Khmer Rouge atrocities, including piles of skulls. That seemed odd in the context of the loud techno music with booming bass, and the evening's louder-yet twentysomething crowd, too busy waving, chatting, and table-hopping to give the screen a glance. A balcony-level loft with more tables looks down on the action. That and the outside patio seem to be the primo spots for peace-lovers when the house is full. Happily, not all nights are so frantic -- another weeknight visit at an early hour found the room quieter and the vibe mellow.

The loose-sheet menu printed on fuchsia copy paper (so you can check off your choices if you have a pen on hand) includes 30-odd items. The first menu section is called "Shooters, Spoons and Demi Soups," most of these furnishing about four bites total -- but those bites are intense. Take the dish described as "Diced Maine Lobster-Passion Fruit-Ginger-Grapefruit-Ponzu." A glass cylinder arrives filled with a mysterious colloid that proves a brilliant way to present (or disguise) the bulk lobster knuckle meat that has been showing up everywhere. This bracing mixture contrasts the dark flavor of passion fruit and the tartness of citrus against the lightest touch of soy. You get a small spoon, but after the lobster bits were gone, we simply chug-a-lugged it like a sushi bar's honeymoon oyster.

Crispy veal sweetbreads are another dish that meets the challenge of a difficult ingredient: Sweetbread (cow pancreas or thymus) is so unctuous that it's too filling for a full entrée. Here, you get a fried morsel, crisped on the surface, complemented by diced candied quince (very sweet), a mini-frizz of peppery "rainbow sprouts," and a crowning touch of savory Banyuls gastrique, a light sauce made from a young red Provençal wine. It's a great dish to introduce this seldom-seen delicacy to people who've never tried it.

This menu section also yields a jumbo sea scallop sashimi -- three paper-thin slices of silky sea scallop topped with three fresh blackberries, dressed in Kaffir lime-infused olive oil and garnished with micro mint sprigs. The combination is fresh, subtle, unexpected. Then there's the most substantial choice, a small cup of lobster bisque, sweetened with a touch of Tuaca citrus-vanilla liqueur and topped with a puff of vanilla whipped cream. It resembles a cup of hot cocoa made with lobster instead of chocolate, and in place of a cookie, it comes with a crostini of lobster meat and mascarpone cheese. The soup was too sweet for my partner's tastes, but I found it a kick.

"Small Plates Cold" are next on the menu. These include bar nibbles like marinated olives, fried almonds, spiced cashews, and house-made soft pretzels, followed by several salads. The cheese plate (with fruit conserves and spiced walnuts) makes a sophisticated final course in lieu of dessert. We also enjoyed a roasted white corn pancake (served hot, not cold), slicked with a spicy pepper purée. Crowning the pancake is a chilled curl of spicy salmon gravlax -- house-cured in tequila, cilantro, and powdered pasilla chile -- girdling a palate-cooling dollop of crème fraîche.

"Small Plates Hot" is the header for the largest group of dishes, found on the reverse side of the pink page. These tapas aren't all that small. We found them substantial enough to share between two nibblers.

Not to be missed is a summertime specialty: BBQ Sugarcane Shrimp Adobo. At first bite, my inner Little Richard wanted to burst into screams of jubilation: "He's got it! Yeah-eah he's got it!! Whop bobalula, a whomp bam boom!" Two jumbo shrimps (each skewered on a small stick of sugarcane) are rubbed with Mexican-style adobo paste and briefly cooked on a very hot gas grill. The adobo caramelizes to a sweet, smoky char, especially on the tail shell, while the prawn meat emerges tender and juicy. The shrimps are perched on a martini glass, atop a haystack of crunchy jicama sticks with a light Meyer lemon dressing, covering a scoop of pineapple-Scotch Bonnet sorbet -- icy-spicy-sweet. Scotch Bonnets are the Jamaican variant of the habañero (reputedly the hottest of all chilies) that are not merely incendiary but boast a unique fruity-mustardy flavor. In this dish, all the flavors, textures, and temperatures harmonize but remain distinct -- sweet, smoky, savory and spicy, hot and cold, smooth, crunchy, and meaty -- and you get to participate in the creation of this masterpiece by choosing your sequence of bites.

A similar thought pattern seems to animate the seared foie gras plate, which comes with savory pinot noir onion marmalade and candied apples, along with a glassful of bubbly apple mimosa (champagne and pulpy apple nectar). I loved the mouth-shocking surprise of the mimosa, but the foie gras seemed greasy.

A wilder harmony arises from a quartet of hot bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Parmesan. A thick, crisp slice of applewood-smoked premium bacon is a delicious foil to each fruit, and the cheese inside is melted to a rich, nutty-flavored goo. I took a couple of these home to gently nuke the next morning, and they were a breakfast of champions -- or at least a champion breakfast.

Asian flavors are represented in several seafood dishes. Black mussels in Thai red coconut curry make a full entrée for one (or even two, if you've been noshing through the menu). The mussels were pristine, every single one clean-smelling, open, and tender. The curry is light, thinned with sake and sweetened with a simple syrup infused with Kaffir lime leaves. The dish is decorated with spinach leaves, deep-fried to crisp, translucent green lace (a technique Walsh borrowed from Nobu -- the famous New York Nobu, that is). Alongside are crostini to dip in the sauce; ask the waiter for more if you need them.

Vietnamese braised jumbo sea scallops -- another substantial portion -- were instantly recognizable as a piscine spin on Vietnamese shaking beef -- very specifically, the shaking beef cooked by Charles Pham at San Francisco's famed Slanted Door, where both Walsh and I have enjoyed the dish. The tender scallops are robed in a sauce of caramelized sugar, ground star anise, and plentiful black pepper, with additional spice from Thai basil and togarashi ("seven spices"), a Japanese powdered blend that includes hot Asian chilies, orange zest, ginger, and nori seaweed. The dish has plenty of kick, and the star anise and citrus peel keep drawing you into it with their seductive fragrances. Alongside is a mound of spice-sprinkled jasmine rice and a slice of starfruit (carambola). Crisp and tart, the fruit is good for nibbling between bites to "cool" the sugar and heat.

Less successful, we thought, was a miso-glazed salmon medallion with palm sugar vinaigrette and fried pea-shoot leaves. Nothing seriously wrong there (although the fish may have been cooked a few seconds too long), but it was less jazzy than our other dishes. There's also a plate of jumbo shrimp tempura with garlic fries and chipotle aioli. We didn't try it, but as a familiar-sounding dish among the exotica, it was a clear favorite of the hard-drinking young crowd at the designer pocketbook show.

The same crowd went for the Mexican-influenced dishes, I noticed. Trying some ourselves, we loved the mini-quesadillas of folded-over small corn tortillas (themselves remarkably full-flavored) filled with squash blossoms, huitlacoche, and queso fresco. The secret is: split them open and insert some of the savory roasted tomato salsa served alongside, which completes the chord. But I found a rock shrimp tostada dish rather ordinary, dominated by the bean component.

Still hungry? A good choice to cap off a grazing dinner is the beef tenderloin skewer, featuring superb rare meat with a double-dip: a gorgonzola fondue made with a fine grade of cheese and a rich dark red port wine reduction. The two invariably flow together. You can even play fancy chef and paint psychedelic squiggle patterns with the sauces on your plate.

"Sliders" is the final menu section, consisting of four hot mini-burgers, plus a grilled baguette with Fontina cheese, turkey, et al. The sliders come in choices of Indian spiced lamb, Angus beef, or duck confit, all served with garlic fries. We tried the duck, its bun garnished with a sweet honey-rum glaze. Given a limited appetite, I prefer to spend mine on the more original and venturesome dishes here, but the sliders are mainstays of the cocktail crowd. The garlic fries proved quite garlicky, but otherwise, they're McDonald's-style, slim and pale with pulpy interiors. At a restaurant as good as Confidential, I'd have expected double-fried frites with melting interiors, or crisp, skinny straw-fried potatoes -- in short, something more spectacular. Odds are, the club kids prefer them as is.

Finding beverages to go with such a range of dishes and flavors was a labor of love and laughter. The house cocktails I tried mainly ran sweet for my tastes (with the exception of the stately $14 Millionaire Margarita, made with anejo tequila and fresh-squeezed lime). I usually match fruity white wines with spicy ethnic foods, and a selection of non-Chard, non-Sauv vintages, labeled something like "Good to Know," held suitable choices, including a Riesling, a Gewürtz, a Viognier, and especially a lyrical Marsanne-Viognier blend. Headwaiter Sam (he's the tattooed guy) displays excellent taste in both the foods and wines here and dispenses reliable advice; the second evening I followed his suggestion of a glass of Chalk Hill Chardonnay. It truly had the "right stuff," a blend of butter and oak with a strong enough backbone to stand up to every storm of seasonings.

Desserts seem aimed at the younger crowd, with choices like vanilla bean crème brûlée and white chocolate brownies (with an option for gooey sauces). I tried the one grown-up possibility, crustless Meyer lemon cheese tart with fruit confit. Not bad, but I think Walsh's pronounced sweet tooth is better expressed when he uses fruits and syrups as grace notes for savory and spicy dishes -- a skill he's mastered. Since he changes the menu with the seasons, I can hardly wait to come back and see what he'll invent next.

ABOUT THE CHEF

"I started learning to cook at a very young age," says chef Chris Walsh. "My mother was a good cook and had been a restaurateur before I was born, and she looked back on it with a certain remembered glamour. I was just naturally curious about cooking. I never intended to become a chef, yet my first job was in a restaurant when I was 16 -- washing dishes. I enjoyed it, oddly enough! They let me start cooking three months into the job. Because I cooked at home, I already knew how to use a knife and to cook simple stuff. By the time I was 17, I was actually the sous chef of a small Italian restaurant, Ristorante Gallileo, in Poway, my hometown. I studied for a year at Mesa College's Culinary Food Service Program, but I found I was learning more from actually working in restaurants.

"I was sous chef at La Jolla Village Inn, and then I worked in New York for about two years. Then I went to Gustav Anders [a famed San Diego restaurant that, before it moved north to the L.A. area, was the "alma mater" of, among others, Laurel founder Douglas Organ and Parallel 33's Amiko Gubbins]."

After cooking for nearly a decade at California Cuisine on University Avenue, he opened his own Cafe W in the fall of 2001. There he pioneered his small-plate menu until a kitchen fire closed the doors. "It wasn't really a bad fire, and it looked like we could reopen in about eight weeks," says Chris. "But the landlord dangled us along for about eight months before we finally said, okay, we have to move on. During that time I burned up most of my savings. I did little odd jobs cooking dinner parties until this [offer] came along. When I met with the owners of Confidential -- they're an investment group -- I was involved in the design and planning of it for six months before it opened.

"This sort of menu really came from my experiences in New York and San Francisco. It led me back to when I was much younger, in the '80s, when there was a trend called 'grazing.' For me, it was a great thing. A group of us would go to three different restaurants in one night and just eat appetizers. It was such a fun way of eating. Then the '90s came, with the trend to more rustic food. So when I saw that grazing was a potential new trend again, I just jumped on it, because I love it so much. I think it's a healthier way to eat. And the tapas concept works well for people to try foods they've never eaten before. Like the sweetbreads -- it's not too much of a commitment to put down $7 for a little spoon of it to see whether or not you care for it.

"It's definitely more labor-intensive to do. I need 50 to 75 percent more kitchen staff than if I were doing the same number of $30 entrées. It works out in the end -- it's a little more cost at the food end, but we try to make it up on cocktails." How does he come up with new recipes? Eating out (particularly at Thai and Vietnamese restaurants) on his nights off is one influence, cooking magazines provide seasonal inspirations, and sometimes he literally dreams of new dishes in his sleep. His future plans? That's strictly confidential!