OUTPOST OF NEW MEXICO SERVES CARNE ADOVADA

The sign at Anita’s reads “New Mexico Style.” The first time I passed it, I screeched to a stop and ran in, expecting . . . oh, I don’t know what.

Inside it looked like just the usual little Mexican restaurant, though, and the menu looked pretty much like any Mexican restaurant menu, so I ran back out in despair and lost myself again in the streets of Fullerton.

Then somebody told me Anita’s was an unusual place, an honest place that raised its own peppers. So I rounded up a group of people and went back to see.

This time I took a closer look at the menu and made the amazing discovery that Anita’s is a chain. There is indeed a branch in Santa Fe, but there are five more branches in . . . Virginia. It’s a good bet Anita’s has the New Mexican cuisine market as thoroughly sewed up in Vienna, Fairfax, Burke, Herndon and Chantilly as it does in Fullerton.

The menu still looked pretty much like any Mexican restaurant’s, though. The precise distinction between new and old Mexican must be a matter of emphasis..

In New Mexico you often get tortillas of the peculiar slate color we have learned to call “blue,” and a tortilla-like fritter known as Navajo fry bread. None of this is relevant at Anita’s, where neither are served.

However, Anita’s does make sopaipillas, which may be descended from fry bread or something very much like it, though they are not unknown in Old Mexico. These are irregular, mountain-and-valleyish sheets of fried dough, in effect eggless plain fritters. You can get them with your meal, where they serve as rather rich and slightly messy tortillas, or at the end of the meal, where they are quite delicious with honey. Recommended.

Otherwise, the newness of the Mexicanness at Anita’s can be hard for an outsider to specify. They make a point of using New Mexico peppers. One chili spice mixture they use is New Mexican, and a very good one it is, but you would not swear you’d never tasted anything of the sort before.

The rest of the menu, though, would not exactly startle anybody. You can get huge, rich nacho plates with jalapenos and tomatoes and black olive rings. There are fajitas, of course, and an Anita Burger, which you can get with bacon and cheese and avocado.

The tacos are decent, using genuine chicken boiled to bits as a taco is supposed to, and shredded beef instead of ground beef (for 25 cents extra), and you can get them soft, as God meant tacos to be (for 15 cents more than the crisp tacos).

The New Mexico Special burrito is the sort of huge burrito we love in these parts. It looks like an old-fashioned bolster pillow, and it’s filled with cuminy ground beef, red chili, refried beans and rice, and is topped with tart green chili and the usual cheese, black olives, chives, jalapenos and tomatoes.

The rice and beans, incidentally, are a cut above the ordinary, the rice having a good nutty aroma and the beans (not overrich) a pleasant plain pinto bean flavor.

The most interesting thing here, though--and, apart from the sopaipillas , the reason to come--is the carne adovada. This definitely is New Mexican: pork in a red rather than a green chili (the meat is also marinated in peppers for 24 hours before cooking). Slightly tart, faintly bitter from all the ground chilies in it, it’s rich with pepper aroma and positively grainy with ground spices. You can get it by itself (they automatically give you two big flour tortillas with it--ordinarily tortillas are a side order), or in a very good carne adovada burrito.

The dessert menu is as short as at most Mexican restaurants, but actually pretty interesting. The cheesecake is surprisingly good, possibly flavored with a pinch of cinnamon and clove and topped with a nice sour-cream layer.

The ominously named “Anita’s Cherry Delight” (there’s an apple model too) turns out to be sopaipillas sprinkled with powdered sugar (and cinnamon, in the Apple Delight) with some cherry or apple pie filling of the cornstarch-thickened sort familiar from supermarket fruit pies. Not bad.

This is a plain, though neat little place, and the prices are as you would expect. Appetizers and nachos run $1.25 to $3.75, tacos and tostadas $1.10 to $2.75, burritos $1.95 to $4.25 for the huge New Mexico Special Burrito. Dinners of the usual enchilada, chili relleno and combo plate selection are $3.95 to $6.45. The “Anita’s Delight” desserts are $1.15 and the cheesecake $2.25.

ANITA’S MEXICAN FOOD 600 S. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton

(714) 525-0977

Open for lunch and dinner (until 8) Monday through Saturday. No credit cards.