Valdez

Update: Restaurant has Closed.
Spanish Tapas! 

Whole fried Branzino

I love the Spanish/Portuguese way of cooking branzino - something about frying the European sea bass just makes it taste better.  The fish was flaky and tasty, but the rice and salad were a rather strange accompaniment. I think I would have liked something with a little sauce on the side since the fish was fried and a little on the dry side.  Also, the banana leaf was nice for presentation, but I'm not too sure if it added flavour anywhere else. 

Meat platter

This was a sample platter of everything: from chicken wings, chorizo, ribs, arepas and other things I've never eaten before. Everything was tasty, but it was so much food for the three of us! 

Assorted chips

I loved this! You could tell it was all home-made chips from the fried plantain slices to the other assorted root vegetables and it paired nicely with the guacamole and salsa. 

Albondigas
Huge chunks of queso and big fat meatballs in this lovely tomato sauce 'soup'. So good! I really loved the sauce.

Dessert
I forgot the Spanish name for this, but it looked like a bread pudding and ended up being really mushy inside and really sweet with some jelly/jam on top.  I wasn't really a fan.

Overall: The restaurant was loud and had a party/bar vibe.  The service was pretty good, but we had to keep asking the waiter for water since the food was a little dry. The food was pretty interesting since it wasn't just food from Spain, but there were things like arepas (Venezuelan/Columbian) and yucca (which I've associated with South America - namely Peru).

Website: http://valdezrestaurant.com/