Hogan, the wine buyer for Berkeley's Spanish Table store, has orchestrated our route, a 1 1/2-mile walk that will showcase an emerging Iberian village. In this new little world straddling North Beach, the Financial District and Russian Hill, a Bay Area tapas enthusiast with good walking shoes can do the sort of bar hopping that many Spaniards enjoy nightly.

"I couldn't have done this two years ago," says Hogan, who conducts a guided tapeo monthly for paying guests. "The critical mass of places didn't exist."

But on this chilly evening, Hogan is escorting my husband and me on a private tapeo, beginning with dry sherry at the 8-month-old Gitane.

"They have a great range of the ones I really like," says Hogan, as we decide on drinks at the restaurant's glamorous bar, a lavishly draped and chandeliered space with soaring ceiling. Although the dinner menu ranges beyond Spain, the bar menu celebrates sherry, with 20 selections by the glass.

We choose the Gutierrez Colosia Elcano Fino and the La Cigarrera Manzanilla, both the sort of gripping, salty sherries that make your mouth water.

"With those, you need to have sardines," advises Carlo Splendorini, the bar manager. A plate of silky marinated fresh sardines arrives with crostini, tapenade and caperberries. Hogan spreads a toast with tapenade, lays a sardine fillet on it, and then places the tidbit on top of his wine glass, demonstrating how the original tapas were employed to keep flies out of patrons' glasses.

Traditionally tiny

"Tapas is code for tiny appetizers," says Hogan. In Spain, a tapa can be as simple as a serving of sliced chorizo, toasted almonds or fried peppers. To his dismay, American restaurateurs have adopted the term but ignored the spirit - they'll downsize anything and call it a tapa to appeal to customers' desire to graze.

"Just because you put it on a small plate doesn't make it a tapa," Hogan says. Tapas should pique the appetite, not quell it, because Spaniards typically go from tapas to dinner. The American happy hour, an orgy of cheap but filling nibbles for serial cocktail drinkers, is only a distant cousin of the Spanish ritual.

"A tapeo is about strolling and snacking, not about sitting down and filling your stomach," says Hogan. In some towns, bars become known for their expert preparation of a particular tapa, so friends might meet at the venue famous for its sauteed mushrooms then walk to the place with the best ham and finally on to an establishment that does superb fried squid.

Leaving Gitane, we walk down Bush Street and turn left on Belden Place to check out B44. Sitting at the dark, glossy bar of this Catalonia-inspired restaurant, we order glasses of Naveran Brut, the region's beloved cava. We order a delicious tapa of grilled morcilla - Spanish-style blood sausage - served on white beans with garlic mayonnaise, and another, the Catalan specialty called escalivada, or roasted summer vegetables in olive oil.

Floored

Already I am noting stark differences between a tapeo in Barcelona and San Francisco. In Spanish bars, cigarette smoke thickens the air and cured hams dangle overhead, dripping juices into tiny paper cups suspended underneath them. Terra-cotta cazuelas line the bar, tempting customers with their appetizing contents, and cheap, grease-stained paper napkins litter the floor.

"You can't get Americans to throw stuff on the ground," says Hogan as I comment on the spotless floor at B44. Nor can you convince American public-health officials that prepared food belongs, unrefrigerated, on a bar. County regulations don't permit it, making San Francisco bars safer places to eat, perhaps, but far less atmospheric.

From B44, we stroll down Pine Street and turn left on Montgomery to have a Basque experience at Bocadillos, Gerald Hirigoyen's contemporary tapas restaurant. We order the Ameztoi Txakolina, the vivacious, spritzy, slightly bitter white wine of the region, served in the wide, straight-sided tumblers that Hogan says are traditional for Txakoli. With it, we eat a warm octopus salad and the thick-cut, spicy fried potatoes known as patatas bravas.

Hogan's high regard for tapas in Spain rests on what he calls "the simplicity factor," the pride that proprietors take in sourcing and serving the best, whether the finest cured ham or the freshest shellfish. It's a "do the shopping, not the cooking" approach that resonates with him far more than the French cooking of his European childhood.

"In Spain, the tapas aren't fussed with," Hogan says. "There's no drizzle of olive oil, no sauce. The napkins are like Kleenex. But there's a conscious level of quality."

From Bocadillos, we hike several blocks to the corner of Mason and Pacific, where Kevin Davis and Gonzalo del Castillo have opened Lalola, their paean to del Castillo's native Madrid.

"Every Spanish person I've brought here has fallen in love with it," says Hogan. Certainly this diminutive restaurant, with its hanging hams, marble counter and tall bar tables, feels more like a neighborhood watering hole.

Have a seat

Hoping to create a place "that would look and feel like it came out of Madrid," Lalola's owners were counting on customers standing around the bar to eat or perching on the few stools they provided at high bar tables.

"But people would come in and they wouldn't eat until they had a seat," says co-owner Kevin Davis. "They would wait at the bar until a seat opened up." He quickly doubled the number of stools.

This evening, Lalola is packed with Spaniards. We order the tortilla espanola - properly blond, not golden-brown, notes Hogan - and creamy croquetas de jamon (ham croquettes). We drink the 2004 Luis Cañas Rioja and the 2005 Gárgola, a Tempranillo-Cabernet Sauvignon-Syrah blend, from the restaurant's all-Spanish wine list. And we stand at the tiny counter, sipping and chatting as dusk deepens to dark.

On Hogan's prepaid excursion, wine pours are a modest 2 ounces, so participants can handle five stops without their tapas walk becoming a tapas crawl. We have had a touch more than that but want to hang in for the final destination, the hip 15 Romolo bar in a space old-timers will remember as the Basque Hotel. We are here for a glass of Patxaran, a Basque liqueur flavored with sloe berries, anise and coffee bean.

"This is how you end a meal in a Basque household," says Hogan, as we sip the iced nightcap, a sweet, fruity, exotic concoction. We share an order of funnel cake, a sort of doughnut vaguely related to churros, and try in vain to talk as the youthful crowd at the bar swells and the din grows more relentless.

Although no other corner of San Francisco has enough venues to make a tapas walk feasible, the Bay Area has a burgeoning coterie of Spanish-inspired restaurants (see list, K4). Even if you visit only one or two in an evening, you can participate in the tapas ritual, a custom that is as much about socializing as it is about food. "The tapeo is about seeing friends," says Hogan. "Tapas are not a lot of fun by yourself."

For information on Kevin Hogan's tapas walk, go to his blog at salondelvino.wordpress.com. Tapas walks are scheduled on Sept. 16 and Oct. 14. Cost is $65.

Inside: Top 10 tapas, restaurants, recipes and the perfect tapas wine: Txakolina. K4, K5

Janet Fletcher is a Bay Area freelance food writer and cookbook author. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page K - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle