Restaurante Casa Pepe

Cool soup, red tuna, patient heat

Strawberry gazpacho meets red tuna tartare under chef Juan Pedro Secaduras at Restaurante Casa Pepe in Alcalá la Real. The gesture says much about his station: Andalusian form held close, then tightened by contrast. He works with cold soups, red tuna, slow-cooked meat, peppers and Iberian ham, letting familiar southern Spanish flavors keep their accent while the plate finds a cleaner line. The restaurant has more than 30 years behind it, operating in Alcalá la Real with the character of a tapas and wine tasca rather than a chef’s stage set apart from the room. Secaduras’s published dishes place him in that register. Gazpacho de fresas con tartar de atún rojo brings fruit brightness against the lean depth of tuna. Salmorejo with Iberian ham stays cooler and denser, a bowl built on Andalusian shorthand. Flamenquín gives the table crispness and heft. Carrillada a baja temperadura con salsa strogonoff asks for the opposite tempo, one of low heat, sauce and gradual yielding. His lineage here is stated through the food rather than a named apprenticeship: local forms, regional products, and the kind of repetition that belongs to a house with a long neighborhood memory.

Tapas shaped by contrast

The program at Casa Pepe is built around tapas and raciones, with a working split between more composed plates and the easier language of bocadillos, roscas and bocatines. That range matters because the kitchen has to move between the quick bite and the plate that asks for a slower pass. Boquerones rellenos de pimientos del piquillo, croquetas caseras, bacalao with potato purée and tomato, and pastel de foie all sit within a Jaén vocabulary that does not need dressing up to hold attention. The house won the premio a la tapa más creativa in the 2015 Ruta de la Tapa, a useful marker because the prize belongs to the same local format the restaurant continues to work in. Secaduras’s cooking follows the same method: contrast before ornament. Cool against rich. Bright against deep. Supple against crisp. Fried pimento and padrón pepper with spicy mayonnaise makes that clear at the edge of the table, where pepper flesh softens, batter or skin gives resistance, and heat arrives after the first bite. Slow-cooked pork shoulder with Ratte potatoes moves differently, depending on time to pull the dish into one texture without losing the shape of the meat.

The room near the pass

The room carries the scale of a place made for tapas, wine, families, friends and travelers passing through the Jaén interior. Casa Pepe is small, rustic-modern, and amplified by a comedor, with a terrace outside and the ease of a neighborhood table inside. The pass has to serve both appetite and rhythm: pulpo, arroz negro, langostinos, rollitos de puerro, crepes, varied cheeses, then a Ferrero Rocher casero for those who stay long enough to let the meal widen. Nothing in that list behaves like a tasting menu. It behaves like a counter and kitchen answering a room, plate by plate, while the cook keeps the finish controlled. In Alcalá la Real, that is part of the craft. The room asks for generosity; the bench answers with timing.

A local prize, kept local

Casa Pepe’s award history is not the point of the plate, but the 2015 tapa prize helps locate its discipline. The house was recognized for a creative tapa in the same town where it continues to cook, and the better lesson is continuity rather than display. Secaduras’s Andalusian work has room for strawberry gazpacho, red tuna, salmorejo, peppers and slow meat because the format can hold them all. The bowl is salmorejo with Iberian ham, cool, dense, and still plainly of Alcalá la Real.