This is the newest project for Ben Poremba. It’s Mexican food, but fussed-over, with creatively tooled dishes and delicate flavors going well beyond the usual heritage Mexican palette. I found it captivating, every bit as exciting as gourmet food in any other genre, with Mediterranean and other unlikely elements. It may strike diners as pricey measured next to other ‘Mexican’ menus, but this is highly evolved gourmet cuisine, the kind of food you seek out just for the experience of tasting what the chef comes up with.
Take the Tlayuda ($14)—the items are listed in Spanish, but, thankfully, described in English—a type of Mexican pizza. It was superb, with a cracker-thin crust and ‘carrot-cucumber salsa’ where the traditional tomato sauce would be. Dabs of creamy burrata (a classic Italian cheese) dotted the top, along with a dusting of various seeds. The overriding flavor was coriander, and it was delicious.
The Flautas ($12) also got the gourmet treatment. Traditionally deep-fried roulettes of tortilla dough filled with gooey cheese and meat, these came with a subtle, almost undetectable filling, dominated by a sauce of exotic mushrooms typically found in Asian dishes. Fresh cilantro and a bit of greens were on the plate. Do not miss the Vuelve a la Vida, seafood cocktail ($10) creatively presented in a glass globe. The spin on shrimp cocktail came as a soup of lime juice, hot sauce, minced onions and crushed tomatoes brimming with bits of shell-less seafood: mussels, shrimp and firm white fish. The thinnest slivers of cucumber and jalapeño floated in there as well.
For the more adventurous, Pulpo ($16), a grilled octopus dish, gives the trendy food a wonderful treatment with dense, complex ‘mole almendrado’ (almond). A large portion of charred octopus sits with perfectly charred lettuce leaves (not overly grilled) and amazing rounds of tiny heirloom potato, deep-fried. The mole tasted of traditional Mexican spices—cumin, coriander, chiles—and ground nuts.
A few dishes near the bottom of the menu are bigger and heartier, like Mole Negro ($28), a generous serving of beef cheeks in dense mole sauce. This tasty meat worked well with the heritage sauce—in this case, chocolatey and lightly sweet—attributed on the menu to the chef’s grandmother.
Another big meal was the Comida de Borrego ($49), a plateful of lamb for two. The meat got two different treatments: slow-cooked shredded lamb over a wood fire served inside cauliflower tortillas and roasted lamb loin sliced atop refried beans. The flavors were good: the shredded meat had a strong lamb flavor, the beans were a creamy foil for the milder roasted lamb meat, and the cauliflower tortillas were an interesting take on their traditional corn counterpart.
The desserts are definitely worth a try, especially at $5. You might be tempted to pass up the flan for something more exotic, but don’t. It’s an excellent incarnation, very dense with a light, sweet flavor and caramelized sugar sauce. The concha, a dry, dinner roll-style bun, came filled with whipped cream, dotted by powdered sugar and surrounded by salted caramel sauce.
amuse bouche
the scene | Funky urban cantina
the chef | Tello Carreon
the prices | $8-$28 plates
the favorites | Tlayuda, Comida de Borrego, Mole Negro, flan, Seafood Cocktail, Pulpo
chef chat » tello carreon
pedigree | I have 26 years experience working in kitchens.
favorite ingredient | Peppers
favorite cookbook | Mario Batali’s Simple Italian Food
favorite st. louis restaurant | Tree House on South Grand
most memorable dining experience | Malmaison in St. Albans; I like to eat game, and the sauces and flavors were amazing.
guilty pleasure food | Pork belly