TIO PEPE RESTAURANTE

Vince and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary a few months back.  We planned on going out of town to Maryland for a little getaway, but on the day we were to leave, a heavy snow storm almost snowed our plans in.  We waited for the bad weather to pass but it was already getting late, so we initially decided not to go.  However, soon after we cancelled our hotel reservations and other itineraries, we realized what a bummer it would be if we won't do anything for our first anniversary, so we changed our minds and decided to eventually push through our plans.  We quickly packed our stuff, got dressed, shoveled and scraped heaps of snow, prayed for safety, and in a jiffy, we were off to Baltimore.

Our first stop in Baltimore was at Tio Pepe Restaurante for a sumptuous Spanish dinner in a subterranean setting.  Vince had been wanting to eat Spanish cuisine for a while then, and when he searched for Spanish restaurants in Baltimore, Tio Pepe Restaurante appears as the best and most popular of all.

Our Tio Pepe dining experience was memorable for its authentic Spanish ambiance, from the decor, servers and receptionists, all the way to the food, as well as the Hispanic guests.  Vince and I had Paella a la Valenciana para dos, one of the more popular dishes in its menu.   It is mainly a seafood dish composed of lobster, shrimps, mussels, clams with veal, chorizo and chicken in fragrant saffron rice.   The serving was big for the two of us, and Vince, not much of a seafood eater, we had lots of leftovers as expected.  The food was good - very seafood in flavor - although, we felt it could use more taste from the chicken or veal meat, to counter or maybe neutralize even for a bit the power of seafood in it.  Of course, we're no food critics and we could be wrong to say that, but the meal definitely didn't blow us away.

So what I did was... I took home the leftover Paella a la Valenciana and revamped it to suit our palate.  I reheated it in a pan and added a dash of salt and pepper and a portion of chicken bouillon cube, and that did the trick of enhancing the flavor and taste.  I served the revamped version for our next meal, and voila, we finished it!  Nothing went to waste ;)

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