At first, the stare from the counterman at Mariscos Vallarta didn’t seem friendly. But then, as I dug around in my made-to-order seafood soup, he softened up. I had asked him, in English, what the fish in his sopa de pescado was, and he had grunted, “Vata.”
“What’s vata mean?” I asked.
“Make that vagre,” he said, mixing English with Spanish. Vagre, for the record, means catfish. For a moment, I thought I detected a smile on his face.
The soup tasted hearty and satisfying, even filtered through the odor of the cleaning solvent used to wipe down my table not long before my arrival. The chunks of fish were tender and fresh, and onions, carrots and celery bobbed to the surface wherever I dipped my spoon, adding to the broth’s soothing, homemade flavor.
It got even better when I added chopped onion, cilantro and a dash of El Yucateco Green, a popular hot sauce. For less than $7, including fresh bread and butter, the sopa de pescado at Mariscos Vallarta is a terrific low-priced lunch.
Mariscos Vallarta specializes in seafood and is named after Puerto Vallarta, the legendary tourist haunt on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Cocteles, seafood cocktails of shrimp, fish, octopus or oysters, come in glasses filled with a piquant tomato sauce, topped with a wedge of lime. Soups, caldo or sopa on these often Spanish-language menus, are generally enormous, dependable and delicious. You can also get a nice piece of fried fish here.
These dishes are typical of what to expect in the Mexican restaurants on our city’s east side, a huge area roughly bounded on the south by Tropicana Avenue, on the north by Lake Mead Boulevard, on the west by Eastern Avenue and on the east by Nellis Boulevard. It’s an area generally overlooked by food critics and, one suspects, by even the most adventurous foodies. But I’ve heard that it hosts a fair number of small, authentic Mexican places. The time seemed ripe for a visit.
In that area, the cuisines of three provinces of Mexico—Jalisco, Michoacan and Zacatecas—dominate. What’s more, there are basically only two types of restaurants here, taquerias or seafood houses. If you’ve come in search of regional Mexican fare, say, the cooking of Oaxaca or Veracruz, you’re out of luck.
It’s not that there isn’t variety in the Valley. Just outside the boundaries of the area visited is one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Birreria Jalisco, at 953 E. Sahara, where the only dish served is stewed goat meat, accompanied by condiments, tortillas, salsa and, in most cases, an ice-cold Corona with a wedge of lime. On the Strip, there are upscale places like MGM’s Diego, Isla in the TI and the brand new Diablo’s Cantina at the Monte Carlo; they serve innovative, new-wave Mexican fare from a variety of regions. And on the far west side, there is Frank and Fina’s, a modest place that specializes in the cuisine of the Yucatan, like cochinita pibil, pork cooked in a banana leaf.
But it’s clear from driving around the city’s east side that the money required to sustain an upscale restaurant doesn’t exist here; there’s also a distinct lack of Mexican-Americans from provinces such as Campeche, Yucatan or Pueblo, all known for their cuisine. The upside is that there are some good low-cost places where you can still get hearty food.
Less than a block away from Mariscos Vallarta is one of the three locations of Tacos El Compita, one of the best taco joints in the city. At noon, expect a line of local landscapers and construction workers, day laborers who need a hearty, cheap meal in order to finish a demanding, not particularly well-paid workload.
Tacos, starting at less than $1.50 in here, are two hot corn tortillas brimming with meats of your choice: the spiced, chopped barbecued-pork delicacy called pastor, asada (grilled beef), carnitas (fall-apart tender roasted pork) or various pig parts ranging from tripe to lengua (that’s tongue to you, amigo).
The taco will be served hot, and it’s up to you how many sauces or pickled vegetables you want to pile on from a complimentary condiment bar. Two tacos make a nice lunch, three a filling one. I had a taco al pastor rolled up in aluminum foil, and it was wonderful, but the menu at El Compita hardly stops there.
Filling Mexican snacks, mulitas and cemitas, are worth a detour, because, to quote chef Zoe Alcala, the Guadalajara native who is the executive chef at Diablo’s Cantina, “you just don’t see that kind of stuff in this town.” Mulitas are sandwiches inside two flour tortillas, your meat of choice topped with cheese, onion, avocado and salsa.
Cemitas are similar, except that they are done inside hamburger buns smeared with chipotle, the smoked-jalapenos salsa that is fast becoming a foodie household word thanks to the watered-down version at many Anglo restaurants. It’s piled with meat, cheese, avocado and onion—think Subway on Univision.
There’s also a hearty chicken mole, a half of a roasted chicken slathered with Mexico’s most celebrated sauce.
This brings us to the restaurant called Deliciosos Antojitos, whose name means “delicious snacks.” Both the owner and the food here represent Mexico City, making this place something of a departure. If you crave huaraches, sopes or pambazo, cooked potatoes served with cream, sausage, lettuce and cheese, inside a submarine roll, this modest storefront is the ticket.
I’m a sope guy. Sopes are like fat, round corn tortillas. First, these griddled cakes are covered with refried beans, lettuce and cheese. Then come the meats, such as the delicious shredded pulled chicken or the spicy house chorizo, and finally, sour cream. Delciosos Antojitos also serves chilaquiles, tortilla strips soaked in salsa verde, topped with a choice of steak, eggs or chicken, and huaraches, which are just like sopes, other than the shape of the tortilla underneath. Wash the snack down with one of the house aguas frescas, cold drinks made from tamarind seeds, hibiscus leaf or sweetened rice.
The next day, I drove the length of Nellis and didn’t see a single restaurant that looked like it offered anything I wanted to try. After an hour, I turned down Lake Mead and stumbled onto El Cazador, Spanish for “the hunter,” a yellow stucco bungalow with several cars in the parking lot.
Inside, there is a deer mounted above the door and oversized chairs with multicolored leather cushions. Diego Rivera prints grace the walls, and the interior is both pleasant and welcoming. The restaurant belongs to Mexico native Maria Esparza, who speaks English without an accent and sports a huge menu offering both seafood and meat dishes.
I was optimistic when the menu offered fish a number of ways, including grilled, fried, breaded with garlic butter, spicy Diabla-style and even a la Veracruzana, with a rich sauce that has olives, capers, tomato and onion, so I chose the latter. When the fish came, though, it was bare. “Where’s my Veracruz sauce?” I asked.
“Sorry, no one ever orders it,” the waitress said. Soon after, I got a bowl of sauce brimming with plump, fat green olives, which I spooned over the fish, a butterflied piece of grilled red snapper, by myself.
The other dishes tasted here were all fine—huge fish tacos made with chunks of fried tilapia, pork tamale with enchilada sauce and grilled Cornish hen. Many local Mexican restaurants serve lengua, or tongue, in tacos, but El Cazador is one of the few local places where you can order it as a main course. This is also the place for a Mexican take on lobster Thermidor, which substitutes a mushroom cream sauce for the more classic version, which relies on powdered mustard, cheese and sherry.
My last stop turned out to be La Playita, two blocks north of Lake Mead Boulevard. La Playita, “the little beach,” is about as far from a marine atmosphere as the law allows, a blue bungalow with bars on the windows. On the upside, the restaurant is spotlessly clean. One thing to note that may not be a recommendation is that music plays constantly on a Spanish-language jukebox, performed at high volume.
As English is minimal here, I ordered in Spanish, eliciting gales of laughter from locals and a look of relief from the waitress. After eating our way through perfectly okay plates of fish, two seafood cocktails and hot tortilla chips accompanied by two types of salsa, we noticed a pair of surveillance cameras mounted on either side of the restaurant.
When the waitress asked if the food was sabroso, Spanish for tasty, she seemed genuinely ill at ease with my less than enthusiastic response. What I ate had seemed unusually bland, to the point that I couldn’t help but wonder if the kitchen had toned down the flavors on purpose.
It was a reminder that authenticity doesn’t automatically mean quality or a rewarding cultural encounter—I would have liked to see more passion in the cooking I experienced during these excursions, a few dishes with more depth.
But perhaps I shouldn’t have expected so much. After all, in my part of town, Mexican food usually means chains like La Salsa or Zaba’s, where, shall we say, a less soulful style of cooking is found. As long as you keep it all in context, you may want to pay these places a visit. You can’t beat the prices.
Max Jacobson is the Weekly’s restaurant editor.
Mariscos
Vallarta
4425 E. Tropicana Ave., 444-1806.
Tacos El
Compita
6118 W. Charleston Blvd., 878-0008; 7622 Westcliff Road, 319-8283; 4455 E. Tropicana Ave., 313-8870.
Deliciosos Antojitos
4262 E. Charleston Blvd., 438-0870.
El Cazador
1108 E. Lake Mead Blvd., 639-4010.
La Playita
2238 N. Pecos Road, 459-4169.