Baltimore Restaurant Review: Pazo Take 2

Its been a few months since I have been to Pazo and tonight I returned to celebrate a birthday. There were 20 of us eating from a prix fixe menu. Now Pazo is a tapas bar and the prix fixe menu is a little strange. Tapas restaurants are designed to bring people together to have little meals, nothing heavy, nothing overly committing basically tapas meals are just right. i like tapas because i can have alittle bit of everything. Pazo this go around seemed different. Its not as much about the food as the scene. Pazo is from the same restaurant owneership that own Cindy Wolf's Charleston and Le Petit Louie and the latter restaurants put food first and the scene second. Pazo wants both cool scene and great food. Good luck. Pazo also has dancing? How crazy is that?

Pazo was packed with people going out on the town. Scanning the room a dinner mate sugegsted that the restaurant woould be a good backdrop for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, deep reds, dark woods, and hot vampires waiitng to pick off unsuspecting reveillers. People were dressd up and looking good. Some of the women in the bar had great tops on, you know the awesome kind that tie around their necks, very cool. But Pazo has a mix of old and young, hip and square. Pazo is trying hard to claim the mantle of hipsterville Baltimore, MD and frankly I'm not sure if it can claim the title. Pazo is tryign but the question should be "Is Pazo so hip that it is bringing in the cool people into this Baltimore eatery or are people going to this hotspot to feel hip." The problem is this new dinner, club, lounge movement only works when those areas are distinct, seperate and can carry their appointed environement. At Pazo, they move out late diners to open the dance floor and that doesnt work.

The scene and food combo is so hard to accomplish. So let me address the food scene.

Tapas vs Prixe Fixe, so tonight was a new take on Pazo. Instead of just tapas we had a plotted meal with about ten dishes. The best dish are the empanadas. The empanadas are beef and veal, flakcy crust surrounding well seasoned ground beef was awesome. They really should have just put out stacks of empanadas. We had empanadas, spagetti squash, chicken pincho, rosted red pepper salad, hangar steak, a flakey fishy, gnochi, brocolli, sauted mushrooms, and smashed sweet potato. Remember that tapas are meant to be a mish mash of flavors and foods that is directionless, the problem is that when you assembly courses like a prixe fixe menu it should have a light motif, a mood, a theme if you will. This meal did not have a theme and that diminshed the effectiveness and impact of the food. This is not to say that the food wasnt tasty, I liked everything just fine; however i feel obligated to not review indvidual dishes but the whole concept. The theme was lacking, you figure this restaurant group could organize a prix fixe celebratory meal that would kick ass. they tried to put a menu together but why two squashes, and the roasted red peppers on iceberg lettuce quarters, or the brocolli or for that matter why start with empanadas then move into hangar steak and pistachio encrusted fish?

Anyway, Pazo is fun. It's lively and tons of entertaining food and people, but their effort to make this a hip great food longe destination lacks true soul. Do one thing and do it well. If you want dinner, club, and lounge you have to seperate it and let them co-exist. You can not have one rely on the other to exist. This place had potential if it wants to really capture one's imagination.