Restaurante Oaxaca

Today we tried our luck at Restaurante Oaxaca, a Mexican place up on MLK that had a nice review in NUVO a few weeks back that spoke well of the mole (and of the other things to eat there, too—but mostly the mole). The exciting part was getting there, because I don’t know the west side all that well, and also because we didn’t decide on this place until we were in the car. Even though I knew it was on MLK, and MLK is finite—it only exists from 38th Street to West Street—I still wasn’t familiar with that part of town, and I usually get it wrong when I have to guess which way to turn; and I guessed wrong today, too, except that the restaurant was in the little strip mall I guessed at, just not in the specific storefront I eyeballed from the road.

We weren’t entirely sure they were open when we walked in. The lighted sign in the window said they were open, and the door was unlocked; but there was no one in the dining room, neither diner nor employee. After a minute or two, though, someone came out to greet us and we were seated. The dining room is very spare, a four-by-four space that looks sort of like a cleaned-out convenience store or a Chinese take-out place; but it’s sometimes those little hole-in-the-wall places that wind up being the best kept secret in the neighborhood. That might well be the case with Oaxaca, which used to live inside a grocery store on Lafayette Road.

The menu, like the space, is somewhat spare; but it has the aforementioned mole, which you don’t find too often, even in the those Mexican restaurants where the menu has hundreds of choices and goes on for pages and pages. They offer tacos and fajitas and a burrito, as well as menudo soup—and a number of other things, but I have to confess to a bit of journalistic ineptitude here, because I didn’t commit them to memory or write them down, and the restaurant does not have a website. I ordered the three tacos for five bucks. They are offered on the menu with your choice of chicken, beef, or barbacoa (shredded beef); and I got one with chicken, one with barbacoa, and I asked if they could put chorizo in the other one—which they could. Amy ordered the mole ($8.95).

Instead of the usual chips out of a bag and thin salsa, what they brought out to whet our appetities was a bowl of something green that looked like either thick salsa or thin guacamole. That was served with chips, and the chips were so thick that I wondered if maybe they had actually cut up tortillas and dropped them into oil while we waited. I didn’t think to ask, but they were a few minutes coming out, so I went ahead and guessed that they were homemade. Either way, they tasted great, with a good solid crunch and not much in the way of an oily feeling. The green stuff in the bowl was unlike any salsa I have ever tasted—packed with avocado, cilantro, and enough jalapeño that you could taste the pepper and feel the heat.

The tacos were also unlike what you get in most Mexican places when you order tacos. The gringo version of this Mexican staple has morphed into a crunchy corn shell filled with meat and topped with some combination of lettuce, tomato, cheese, and sauce. The only thing this has in common with an authentic Mexican taco is the meat filling. An authentic Mexican taco is meat served on top of two soft corn tortillas and topped with cilantro and onion. They are only served folded if they are “to go.” Other than Oaxaca, La Bamba is the only place in town where I can remember being served authentic tacos.

The barbacoa was nothing to write home about, being somewhat greasy and listless and not especially flavorful. The chorizo, on the other hand, was crisp and bright with flavor; and the chicken was seasoned perfectly, more flavorful and interesting than chicken tends to be at places like this. The mole, I thought, was only so-so. There was quite a lot of it, over a one-quarter bone-in chicken. The sauce was sweet at first taste, and stayed sweet to me through the finish. Amy said that subsequent bites let the other flavors of the mole open up a bit, but I did not go back for a second taste and so had to take her word for it.

It should also be noted that both dishes came out piping hot, like the food had gone from grill or oven directly to the plate and then directly out to our table, within a span of seconds. Other than that impressive piece of timing, the service was spotty. We were the only customers in the restaurant from the moment we walked in to the moment we walked out (and lest you think that says something about the place, we came in around 2pm, well after whatever lunch rush there might have been); and even though that was the case, both drink refills and the check were awhile coming. That’s a minor quibble, though. The food more than makes up for a bit of waiting, and we’re both pretty sure we’ve found our second-favorite Mexican place in town (after the inimitable El Sol de Tala). A lot of Mexican places tout their “authentic” food, but remember—if you get a taco in a crunchy shell, it’s not authentic.

I know a lot of people will stay away from this place just because of its location on MLK, and that’s unfortunate on multiple levels. If, on the other hand, you’re already planning to visit the art museum to see the Thornton Dial exhibit of art made from found objects, why not swing by Restaurante Oaxaca on your way—or on your way to check the museum at Crispus Attucks High School, which is down at the other end of MLK. Remember, “we can’t close our eyes to the plight of the cities.”

2958 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street
490-2429