My friends Michael and Imtiyaz have been trying to get into Tres Gatos Tapas Bar, Books and Music since it opened about a year ago. Almost from the moment the lights went on, the picture window looking out onto Centre Street has offered envy-stricken passersby a tempting glimpse of a warm, shimmering space full of happy, happy people.

Joining them at last, early on a quiet between-the-holidays evening, I’m excited to be soup-scoping at a place in my neighborhood for the first time. There’s a bar with a few seats, several high tables with stools, and a banquette in the cozy back corner. In the next room is a chef’s table that seats up to ten. It’s tiny, but that’s not the reason it’s hard to get a seat (they gently maintain a two-hour limit at the tables). The moment the first dish arrives, it becomes clear why the place is always packed.

We start with patatas bravas, chunks of potato fried to perfect crispness, a crunchy, salty shell yielding to a tender center, with two excellent sauces: a tart aioli and a mildly spicy salsa brava. There might even be lime in the salt; the potatoes are so good, and disappear so quickly, it is hard to maintain analytical detachment. Albóndigas, chorizo-spiced pork meatballs topped with a dab of chimichurri and lined up atop a squiggle of saffron cream, are soft and succulent, the saffron’s rich perfume complementing the meat’s richness.

Two bowls appear, the main event, worthy of any soup-obsessive’s worship: the buttercup squash soup with Moroccan spice and toasted pumpkin seed oil. The oil is the deep brown of fine leather, and the flavor is heavenly: nutty, savory, a distilled memory of the seeds we used to salt and roast on Halloween. The soup itself, unlike its ubiquitous butternut squash cousins, is barely sweet, dark ochre instead of orange, fragrant with cumin and more. The real hit of sweetness comes from several little cubes of squash, surrounded by three dollops of crème fraîche and sprinkled with roasted pepitas, for crunch and a little zing of salt. The soup is wonderful; it’s all we can do to keep from lowering our heads to the table to lick the bowls clean.

I do, however, suck the shrimp heads, and convince Imtiyaz to do the same. I’ve never done that before, but the Gambas All i Pebre (prawns bathing in a toasted garlic and pine nut picada sauce, bubbling in a clay dish) invite transgression. We order an extra plate of the excellent grilled bread to make sure none of the sauce is left behind.

Working our way through the now-crowded room toward the eclectic book and music store that shares the space with the tapas bar, I see some friends we all know at another table—another sign of a fine neighborhood joint. My companions and I stop to chat, and they offer us a few chocolate marcona almonds, available on the dessert menu. They recommend the torta Espanola and the nibbles they’ve been devouring: olives, smoked almonds, housemade pickles, all of which are, of course, gone long ago.

The brainchild of David Doyle and his wife Maricely, this tiny Jamaica Plain jewel (perhaps twenty seats in the main room) serves up small plates as transcendent as the book and music store is eclectic. You can take your wine back and browse, if you can tear yourself away from the delights chef Marcos Sanchez and sous-chef Lydia Reichert are preparing. I’ll save your seat, and I cross my heart that last shrimp will still be here when you get back.