“In the event of fire or earthquake, please wake your waiter.

– one of many signs tacked to the wall in this restaurant…

Vicente Lopez – Finishing up on the other day’s post on my walkabout in this northern suburb, as I mentioned, I was in search of a chivitería that my Brazilian cooking instructor had recommended. Didn’t find it, though I did find the disconcerting Ronald Gym Club…

…and yes, it’s above an active McDonald’s.

But then I spotted one of the three locations of María Félix, at Libertador 2701, in the Olivos area, and thought, well, I’d not been to one of them yet, and Mexican food is a favorite, and I couldn’t remember if anyone had recommended them or dissed them, so why not? Better I’d have continued on to the port area and plopped myself down at one of the open air parrillas.

So, the room is sort of kitschy cute. Too many signs like the one noted above (all in Spanish), and evokes the sort of Tex-Mex restaurant I’d expect to find in “the heartlands” of the U.S. I didn’t know until just now looking at their website that they’re the owners of El Salto de las Ranas – I’d been told that place was owned by the owners of the neighboring parrilla – though now things are making sense in terms of what I found… which is, the food just simply isn’t particularly authentic. It’s a vague approximation, but like I said in the former review, it’s like it’s cooked by someone who doesn’t quite know the food.

A basket of stale chips hit the table moments after I sat, along with the menu, and a watery tomato sauce that might have passed somewhere near to a chili at some point on its journey. My waiter, contrary to the sign, was awake, alert, and attentive, though knew very little about any dish on the menu. I asked if there was any kind of hot sauce around and he offered to bring some, and while he did, he didn’t show up with it (and it wasn’t hot) until the main course. I wanted to try their guacamole, and a taco, and a chicken mole, he opined that it was too much food, and offered to bring, at no charge, a bowl of guacamole to try – quite nice of him. The guacamole was also the highlight of the meal – fresh, tangy, creamy, and absolutely delicious.

The shrimp taco, on the other hand, arrived as a sort of deep-fried springroll of drippingly oily dough atop wilting shreds of lettuce, and itself topped with dried out shreds of tasteless cheese. Inside, while it was packed with a good amount of shrimp, there was nothing else in there, and it was also completely unseasoned, not even salt. Thankfully, I hadn’t finished the guacamole with the stale chips since I didn’t really want to eat the latter, and I ended up spooning it all over the taco.

The chicken mole worried me from the start. I love various types of moles, and the fact that this one didn’t specify what type it was, nor did the waiter have a clue, was a concern. A valid one as it turned out. The sauce resembled some types of mole only in that it was brown and contained chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Sweet chocolate. Opened up a can of Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup sweet (okay, minor exageration). No heat, little in the way of seasoning – some sort of bitter note in the background. And the chicken underneath it was the consistency of chalk it was so dried out. I managed about three bites and then gave up and pushed it away. The waiter whisked it from my sight with a “told you it was a lot of food”, without waiting for a response.

Oh, the “hot sauce” – two ramekins brought to the table with the main course – one of them contained chopped onions that had been marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar, as best I could tell; the other, seemed to be from a jar of sweet pickled peppers, onions and carrots. Both perfectly edible, neither containing anything resembling picante.

I asked for the check, and to his credit, rather than charge me for a la carte prices on the two dishes, iced tea, bottled water (not to mention the already freely offered guacamole), which would have added up to about 65 pesos, he charged me for the menu ejecutivo, or daily businessman’s lunch special, a flat 40 pesos all inclusive.

So, hmm… I recommend stopping by for a beer and a full plate of the guacamole, and hoping that the chips aren’t stale that day… other than that, been there, done that.

“The first time you buy a house you think how pretty it is and sign the check. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It’s the same with men.”

– Lupe Vélez, actress

Buenos Aires – I like celebrating people’s 100th birthdays or similar events for Casa SaltShaker dinners. They basically give me free rein to do a lot more interesting dishes, you know? Now, we’ve hosted some fairly famous centenaries here over the last many months, and I thought it would be fun to stretch the envelope a bit and celebrate a life that was over far too early. María Guadalupe Vélez de Villalobos was born in 1908 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to a colonel in the Mexican army and an opera singer. When old enough for school she was sent to San Antonio, Texas, to be educated in a convent, but she ran away to Mexico City to learn to dance when she was 13. Despite being hauled back to the convent, she continued her “tempestuous ways”, and eventually found her way to Hollywood in 1926, where, over the next 18 years she appeared in nearly four dozen films (save a brief interlude in a Cole Porter musical on Broadway), generally playing the beautiful, volatile girl opposite such comic stars as Jimmy Durante and Leon Errol. Though she never really rose above the “b-movie” level, she was well known for her very public private life as a party girl, and had tabloid covered affairs with a number of actors, including Gary Cooper, eventually married Johnny Weismuller (Tarzan), divorced, and an affair with a young actor named Harald Maresch. She got pregnant during this affair, and rather than have an abortion or bring an out of wedlock child into the world both of which she felt were the ultimate sins against the catholic church, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills at age 36. Adultery, sex outside of marriage, divorce, suicide… aren’t those against the rules too? Methinks there was more to it…

So there I was, with Lupe Vélez’ ghost hovering about and wondering if I was going to do something cool for her birthday or not. I have to admit, San Luis Potosi is not the first region of Mexico I tend to delve into when I cook Mexican food, so this gave me all the excuse I needed to do so. Turns out there are some pretty interesting dishes….

Next up a sopa verde de elote, or green corn soup. The corn isn’t green, it’s simply a pureed soup of corn, peas, fire-roasted poblano peppers, onion, cilantro, a good amount of pre-cooked tomatillos (I finally found a source for fresh tomatillos, yay!), lettuce, and chicken stock, all then cooked together for just a short time – 15-20 minutes or so on simmer – seasoned to taste and served with some freshly chopped cilantro.

The main course was pollo en ajo-comino, or chicken in garlic and cumin. In a big saute pan I sauteed a mixture of cumin, garlic, ancho chili powder, and salt until it was nice and aromatic. Then I added chicken breasts to the mixture and cooked them until lightly browned. Earlier, I’d reconstituted some dried ají panca, the red sort, as dried Mexican peppers aren’t available here (anchos would have been the way to do it right), peeled and seeded them, and then pureed them with their cooking liquid. Once the chicken was browned, I added this puree to the pan (if there’s not enough liquid to cover the chicken, add a little water), covered it and simmered them until cooked through, about 20 minutes. Sliced and served atop freshly made wheat tortillas. Simple, but quite good.

I wonder if I can find any copies of the old Mexican Spitfire films around…

“The Jalapeño takes its name from the city of Xalapa (Jalapa), Mexico where it is thought to have originated. The Jalapeño pepper has since gained tremendous fame due to its versatility in the food industry. Jalapeño Peppers are commonly found in most chain stores, processed sliced and canned. The Jalapeño features a sweet, but hot flavor and delivers approximately 4750 units of heat on the Scoville scale.”

– Roguelands Heirloom Vegetable Seeds Company

Buenos Aires – Not that the quote above is directly related to anything in this post, other than Xalapa, the capital city of Veracruz, Mexico, but it caught my eye as interesting. After my post less than a month ago about the restaurant Vera Cruz and my disappointment in the food there, I was practically ready to give up on Mexican food here in BsAs – a common enough occurence among those who like Mexican cuisine, a few months back I received an e-mail from a friend and travel guide writer who had just spent a couple of weeks trying to find one Mexican restaurant here worthy of being added to the updated version of the guide he’s working on. He hadn’t found one. Dave H commented on my post and recommended a place I hadn’t heard of, named after the aforementioned city, Xalapa, El Salvador 4800, in Palermo, 4833-6102. We approached it with skepticism – having been disappointed enough times – and he’d noted that he used to eat there regularly pre-2001 crash, though had been there since. The same friend who’d joined me at Vera Cruz agreed to giving it a go, and invited another friend of hers, who warned us that he’d been there, and “the food is good, though not a bit of spice”. Not promising.

Luckily, I’ve learned a few things over the nearly three years I’ve been here (time does fly, doesn’t it). The main one, especially when it comes to “ethnic food”, is that if the traditional is spicy, you can count on that the porteño version won’t be – but… if the owners or chefs are the real deal, or at least understand the original cuisine, they’re often happy to make it the right way. So after we’d perused the menu, which is a mix of relatively traditional sounding dishes from Mexico (somewhat limited on our visit by the lack of beef available in the capital – our waiter told us upfront that none of the beef dishes were available), if not the province of Veracruz in particular, along with a bit of a Tex-Mex thrown in, we picked out a few things – some guacamole and a surtido, or mixed selection, of quesadillas to start – my next question to the waiter was, “Is the food Mexican hot?” He laughed and said, “No, it’s porteño bland”. Gotta love the honesty, no? “Can we get it made Mexican style?” “No problem, I’ll tell the kitchen.”

Expecting little more than the addition of a few chopped hot peppers, we plunged into our appetizers. The hot sauce to accompany the chips on the table, bright, tasty, and medium spicy. The guacamole, fresh, smooth, creamy, I wouldn’t have minded a touch more salt, but really well made – quite promising. The quintet of quesadillas arrived – at first, good, but perhaps a trifle mundane – a ham and cheese, a mushroom, a plain cheese, and then we hit the jalapeño and cheese and the, hmmm… it was another pepper, poblano/ancho maybe… memory fails… and we broke a sweat. Really broke a sweat. Delicious! Things were looking up.

And the main courses arrived. A plate of pork and salsa verde enchiladas, another duo of burritos – chicken and vegetable, and my own plate of enchiladas de pollo almendrado – chicken with an almond sauce, which the waiter had highly recommended (he also put it above the straightforward pollo almendrado, served with rice rather than in tortillas, as he said “the kitchen just doesn’t get the rice right”). Let’s just say, not only were these authentic, and tasty, they were on fire. And not just a few uninteresting peppers, or canned and pickled peppers, tossed into the mix, these were the sauces and fillings made right – with different chilies in each, a good amount of them without going overboard, and absolutely… yummy. No question we were sweating from the capsaicin, but we were loving every bite.

Reasonably priced for Palermo, too – for the two shared appetizers, three main courses, a couple of rounds of water, and a beer, with tip we paid 50 pesos apiece. No question I’ll be back there – not that I won’t check out the few remaining Mexican spots in town as I get to them, but this place goes to the top of the list right now. Kudos go out to Dave H for the recommendation!

“I don’t trust him. He likes people, and you can never count on a man like that.”

– Burt Lancaster as Joe Erin in Vera Cruz (1954)

Buenos Aires – I like people. I like food. I like restaurants. So maybe you shouldn’t count on my opinion here. Except maybe because I really wanted to like this particular restaurant. I did like the people – our waiter was delightful, friendly, and even willing to discuss the dishes on the menu. There was a really cute guy behind the bar who was borderline flirtatious from across the room. And speaking of the room, it was kind of kitschy, homey, relaxed feeling – a neighborhood spot that reminded me of Alphabet City restaurants (far East Village for the non-New Yorkers) ten to fifteen years ago. Hey, that’s two out of three. And then the food arrived. Right there I was clued in to why locals think Mexican food is… inedible.

It isn’t, of course. I love Mexican food, but I have yet to find a spot here in Buenos Aires that really offers up a decent version. There are few spots that I’ve tried that are… acceptable. This wasn’t one of them. Vera Cruz, Godoy Cruz 1819, in Palermo, 4833-6958 was where we were giving it a shot. Remember, I really wanted to like this place – local restaurant guides give it thumbs up – “the real flavors of Mexico”, “the only authentic Mexican cooking”… I’m sorry, but not. I’ve spent enough time in Mexico to know the real thing… It isn’t for lack of trying – they’ve got a lot of the elements right – this is the first Mexican place I’ve found in BsAa that actually pumps out some truly spicy food (kind of – for example, we felt like splitting a bowl of nachos, which while not authentically Mexican, were advertised on the menu as “topped with fresh jalapeños, tomatoes, and cheese, and arrived topped by nothing other than some sweetened, crushed tomatoes – we inquired, and our waiter, cheerful and friendly, apologized and took them back to the kitchen, returning about five minutes later with a version that was a bit smaller but now topped with cheese and pickled jalapeños, which are fine if not fresh, and nicely spicy)… and why are there shredded bits of wilted lettuce scattered on the underliner plate?

We were not so successful on the main courses, if you could call the nachos successful. A pollo al pepián rojo, which promised chicken in a tomato, habanero, and serrano sauce, only delivered on more sweetened tomatoes and pickled peppers. Spicy, actually reasonably fiery, but not at the level of habaneros, and lacking in chicken, unless you count a few desultory threads of meat that were floating about in the oily tomato sauce. The lomo dish consisting of something that probably was, indeed, from a cow, but certainly not lomo (sirloin), being mostly bits of gristle and fat – perhaps it was the scraps from trimming a lomo… Both dishes were accompanied by bland, overcooked rice; crusty, dried-out, and flavorless refried beans (I’ve had canned versions that were better) with a couple of corn chips in them, greasy pieces of flour tortillas; bits of wilted lettuce; and the lomo was also graced by a bit of dark olive colored guacamole that could have been passable if it had had some salt added and hadn’t oxidized.

Really, it’d be great if someone opened up a Mexican restaurant here with authentic, good quality food. Not that there’s, as far as I know, a big Mexican population here – and my sense is that many of the restaurants are run by people who only have a vague acquaintance with the cuisine. I think this one actually is run by folks who know something about the food – but are basically just running a “greasy spoon” version of a Mexican restaurant. I certainly know that I went home feeling nothing other than hungry and queasy.

 “Let’s do Mexican,” generally means heading for the closest eatery serving a greasy Tex-Mex mishmash of tacos, burritos, and chimichangas, usually washed down with an inexcusably large margarita flavored sno-cone.”

– Dan Perlman, me

New York City – When I wrote that intro to a restaurant review, fifteen years ago, for some reason I’d thought that the chef of the newly opened Mi Cocina, 57 Jane Street in the West Village, was from Oaxaca. Some time later I believe I was corrected, that José Hurtado Prud’homme is from the Yucatán. Or maybe he lived in both at different times. I should ask him one of these visits… no matter, since that first visit it’s pretty much always been my favorite Mexican restaurant in the city, and while the menu ranges over a good variety of regional cuisine, there are always specialties from the Yucatán on it. So what’s different about that? Well, the region is separated from the rest of Mexico by a steep mountain range, it has several port cities, and, is closer to major cities in the Caribbean than it is to, say, Mexico City. It was also inhabited, historically, by the Maya, and now their descendants, whereas the majority of Mexico was inhabited by the Aztecs. So there are different inherent cultural traditions, as well as a strong European influence (the Spanish invaded and the Dutch traded – it’s always a surprise to visitors to the area to find that Edam cheese is a local favorite), and bits and pieces of other influences. A long time friend and I met up there, as we have so many times over the years… chatted with Chef José for a few minutes (it’s been about four years, so we had some catching up to do, he didn’t know I’d moved to BA)… [Closed]

“It’s hard for people to understand why they should want to eat old-fashioned Tex-Mex. Let me put it this way: You eat at these old Tex-Mex places for the same reason that you listen to scratchy old recordings of the Delta blues. It’s not about the quality; it’s about getting in touch with the roots of American culture.”

– Robb Walsh, Houston Press

Dallas – It’s simply part of the experience. I’m in Dallas, and while there may be Mediterranean and Continental and Chinese and Sushi and pretty much any other cuisine available – after all Dallas arguably has the highest per capita number of restaurants of any city in the country – when it comes to food, I’m here for two things – texas barbecue and tex-mex. Now, if I’d have been smart about it, I’d have spent some time really researching it and figuring out how I could pack in the “real” spots – those that are legend on the Dallas dining scene. But I didn’t, and other than the first day of being here, I haven’t been on my own, and I’ve got a fair number of other people who, of course, have their own opinions, likes and dislikes, willingness to explore and travel, etc. We have limited time for lunch in the midst of the program, so other than day one, dinners are pretty much all there is. So be it. I’m still eating as much barbecue and tex-mex as I can talk them into…