The increasingly competitive Lawrence restaurant industry has caused the owner of a former downtown Mexican cafe to turn to Europe for help.

Kelfel Aqui-Ramirez closed his 7-year-old Mexican restaurant, Coco Loco Mexican Cafe, 943 Mass., last month for remodeling. He recently renamed and reopened the business as a tapas bar.

Tapas, Aqui-Ramirez said, can be described as elegant appetizers that customers casually dine on while having a cocktail in a pub-like atmosphere.

Aqui-Ramirez said the tapas concept was popular in Europe and was starting to become trendy in the United States.

“They’re all over in Europe and we thought it would make a lot of sense in Lawrence,” Aqui-Ramirez said. “We wanted to make sure we’re the first to introduce tapas to Lawrence.”

The business, called La Tasca, which is Spanish for pub, opened this week. It features a menu of approximately 10 tapas ranging in price from about $4 to $10. Aqui-Ramirez said each tapas is about the size of a traditional American appetizer and normally customers will order two or three different ones if they are looking for a full meal.

The tapas, though, won’t look or taste like a standard American appetizer, Aqui-Ramirez said.

“Every one of them will be the type of appetizer that if you went to a restaurant and saw one at the table next to you, you would ask your waiter about it,” Aqui-Ramirez said. “They’ll all be very extravagant.”

For example, the restaurant will feature such dishes as asparagus wrapped in prosciutto; chicken skewers stuck in a grapefruit and covered with peanut sauce; and a Spanish meatball, called an albondiga, covered in a mushroom sauce.

“The place will have a very global feel,” Aqui-Ramirez said. “Some of the dishes will be French, some will be Oriental and a lot will be Spanish.”

Aqui-Ramirez said he hoped the unique menu would draw customers. He said he decided to close Coco Loco after seeing the number of restaurants in Lawrence grow significantly during the past couple of years.

“Everybody’s piece of the pie has shrunk,” Aqui-Ramirez said. “This is a pretty aggressive move for us to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the pack. We think the market is willing to try new things. In fact, we think they want to try new things.”

But, he said, the restaurant will try to keep its lunch crowd by offering a more traditional Mexican menu during the day. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. the restaurant will serve a lunch menu that includes items such as tacos, burritos and enchiladas.

Between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. the restaurant will be closed. At 5 p.m. it will reopen and only serve its tapas menu. It will close at 2 a.m.

Aqui-Ramirez said the business also would keep its Saturday Latin dance night, which it began several years ago. The business plans to add other entertainment, ranging from reggae to 80s-style dance music to an open-mike blues night.

“We’ll offer some type of entertainment every night of the week,” Aqui-Ramirez said. “That’s really the tradition of the tascas.”