Talkin' Oaxacan
Majestic mole reigns at Monte Alban
By Richard Foss
There’s nothing traditionally Mexican about most Mexican food in L.A. Take your typical burrito: Wheat flour, beef, lettuce, rice, and cheese were not only unknown until those pesky Spaniards showed up, the idea of making them into a burrito didn’t occur to anybody until the 1930s. Montezuma and his men would have been baffled, recognizing nothing but the beans and chiles.
The ancient cuisine lives on in areas less settled by the Spanish, and a recent influx of people from Southern Mexico has brought several regional variations to Los Angeles. The most popular is Oaxacan food, recipes of the Zapotec people who ruled the Pacific coast south of Mexico City. Their capital was Monte Alban, a name commemorated in a very good Oaxacan eatery in West L.A.
The restaurant is just another strip mall box from the outside, but the vibrant murals within give the place some character. We spent so much time musing over the menu that our server got impatient – so many items sounded interesting that we had trouble choosing. We decided on an empanada de cuitlacoche ($7.25), chicken mole tamale ($3.75), and a snack item called a molote ($1.25). The molote was two bites of goodness, a corn tortilla wrapped around chorizo and potato so that it resembled a little fried football. This Zapotec samosa was so delicious that I almost asked for another one, but the other starters arrived hot on its heels.
Chicken tamales are hardly a novel item these days, but this one was far from ordinary thanks to the velvety texture of the corn masa and the shot of black mole sauce. Mole is the signature of the Zapotecs, a thick sauce composed of chiles and herbs ground and simmered together, and it is identified by color. Black mole is based on chocolate and chiles and is nearly always paired with chicken, although the ancient Zapotecs would have used duck. The mole with chicken and corn created a velvety warmth; it was one of the best tamales I’ve ever had.
The item described as an empanada was more like a quesadilla made with a corn tortilla, stuffed with cheese, mushrooms, and the corn fungus called cuitlacoche. Cuitlacoche has a sweet, musky aroma and mild flavor, and in this empanada it’s hard to distinguish where it ends and the mushrooms begin. However the flavor balance was created, it was splendid; rich cheese, slightly sweet corn, and shroomy goodness sublime together.
For main courses, we got lucky with barbecued goat ($10.75) and Volcan Oaxaceno ($15.99) – a stone bowl full of beef, pork, cactus, cheese, and sauce all mixed together and garnished with radish and avocado. The traditional name for this dish is molcajete, also the name for the stone bowl, which makes sense because you can think of this as a skillet dinner. It is a casserole in which several distinct flavors are present – the cactus with its tang like a bell pepper, two grilled meats that had notably different textures, onion, cheese, and the mildly spicy red sauce that formed a background to everything.
Our barbacoa de chivo wasn’t barbecued goat as you might expect it, a chunk of roasted meat on a plate, but rather roasted goat submerged in a spicy red chile. The goat was very tender and the piquant sauce was a fine companion to the full-flavored meat. It wasn’t super hot; nothing we were served came close to Thai or Korean levels of spice, but the richness and variety of flavors mingled with heat was delightful.
Though the usual beers and some fresh fruit drinks were available, we decided to try the Mexican wines for novelty’s sake. The chardonnay and rose were both on the sweet side, not pleasant by themselves but much better companions for spicy food than drier wines. The two reds were less suited to the cuisine. Novelty tried; stick to beer or juice instead.
To finish, the rice pudding with a hint of cinnamon ($3.50) and Oaxacan ice cream with fruit ($3.50) were a cooling coda to a robustly flavored meal. I have tried several Oaxacan places on the West Side, and Monte Alban is the only one in the same league as Guelaguetza in Palms. Both are outposts of a complex, ancient cuisine that has survived not only Spanish domination, but L.A. homogenization.
Monte Alban, 11929 Santa Monica Blvd., (310) 444-7736. Open Mon.-Thurs., 8 a.m.-11 p.m.; weekends, till midnight. Parking lot, beer and wine, some vegetarian items.
Published: 09/24/2008
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