La Casita Mexicana

On the Fourth of July, I called three different restaurants to check whether they were open for lunch. They were all closed. Desperate to appease my growling stomach and to impress JP, I thought that the Mexican restaurants, which might have a love-hate relationship with the gabachos (do they still want California and Texas back?!), would be open on Independence Day. So I pored through the list of eateries in Jonathan Gold's Essential 99 L.A. Restaurants and called La Casita Mexicana in Bell, Calif. Some months back, I had read a favorable review of the "slow food" Mexican restaurant written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gold, a.k.a. Juanito D'oro, in the L.A. Weekly. I thought that it would be fun to visit every single restaurant on the list and answer some basic questions: How yummy was it? Whom would I take there? Any quirks? But the first thing I had to determine with La Casita Mexicana was, was it open. "Are you open today?" I asked the friendly male voice who answered the phone at La Casita Mexicana. "We opened at eight," he said. "So you're serving food now?" I inquired. "Yes, we are serving food now," he responded, a little perplexed. I quickly retrieved directions and drove JP and me there. One wrong turn and about 10 miles later, we pulled up in front of the colorful eatery. Nailed to the walls were giant versions of miniature refrigerator magnets shaped as watermelon and lime slices. There might have been a foot-long sculpture of the chia plant, which served as the source for the gelatinous seeds that flavored our lemonade, but I had no idea what a chia looked like, other than a giraffe or cow as advertised in the late night TV commercials for the so-called chia plants.

Once JP and I submitted our drink order, the server returned with a plastic tray of chips drenched in three sauces and a bowl of salsa. The three sauces made the crispy chips all gooey and soft. That was OK with me because they were yummy. From left to right, they were a chipotle, a mole and a salsa verde.

JP and I decided to order two entrees and shared them. As part of the entree orders, we each received a bowl of the Mexican equivalent of chicken noodle soup. The distinction was that the broth was flavored with fish bones or something from the sea.

Gosh, I always get hot and sticky in the summer. This is me in a vintage summer dress, on hiatus from slurping the yummy soup. The indigo-tinted roses helped my unconscious attempt to be patriotic with a red, white and blue colorway.

This is the chiles en nogada that JP and I shared. The chiles were stuffed with a mixture of ground meat and dried fruit. The white cream sauce was a bit sweet, and the dried berries garnishing the dish added a bit of zing to the palate. For some reason, my chile was still a bit spicy. I think I swallowed a few more seeds than I should have.

Instead of the enchiladas, JP and I tried the enmoladas, which were basically enchiladas drenched in a thick and sweet mole sauce. True to the "slow food" philosophy, La Casita Mexicana touted that it used 46 ingredients in its mole sauce. I have fewer than 20 ingredients in my refrigerator, excluding nail polish and facial moisturizer. Though JP ordered the enmoladas con queso (that's with cheese for the non-Spanish speaking crowd), the server gave us chicken-filled rolls.

JP and I were so stuffed by the end of the meal that we didn't have room in our bellies for coffee or dessert. Still, the kind server brought us a complimentary plate of flan. Perhaps the cooks noticed that I was taking pictures with my digital camera. Or they noticed how out of place we were because we didn't speak Spanish and I was the only Asian chick within a 5-mile radius of the establishment. The custard was the thickest and firmest flan I had ever tasted. It was drenched in a toffee liqueur whose name I didn't quite catch, even after the server said it three times. JP and I ate only two quarters of the freebie flan. But it left enough of an impression that I might jot on the margins of the 2007 Essential 99 List: "Very yummy. Clean enough to take my oh-so-Vietnamese parents and authentic enough to take my L.A. pals. Free flan!!"

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