South of the Border Delicacies for Eating In or Out

If you didn’t get to travel to Oaxaca, Michoacan or the Yucatan over the holidays, take heart. Sabroso, the South of the Border restaurant in Venice that seems to be working its way through Diana Kennedy’s “The Cuisines of Mexico,” has meals to go. Small and spirited (and so informal that the cheery staff, even when pressed, can only say they’ll be making home deliveries “soon”), the kitchen turns out a good measure of delicious food.

Daily changing breakfast and lunch offerings are colorfully scribbled on chalk boards. At dinner, there’s a paper menu you take home in your hungry little hands and order from over the phone. (Otherwise, be prepared to wait: Everything is made to order here.)

If your seasonal clock has you craving steaming comfort food, get thee to the homey corn posole ($4.75) which comes laced with tomatillos and soft, fine-shredded beef. Baked pork chile rellenos are fine, surrounded by an insanely good pine nut sauce. Once you’ve warmed up, consider the first-rate ceviche, a succulent mound of perfectly sweet, firm salmon chunks. (On the other hand, fresh sea scallops soaking too long in tomatillo sauce had all the delight of a drowned marshmallow.)

Lunch brought pairs of luscious little tacos: We had the turkey ($3.50 for two) and the duck ($5 for two), which come on child-size, handmade tortillas crowned with a sort of cilantro cream pesto perfume. Tostada shells are fried a nut-brown and come piled high with enough cheese and avocado and protein of your choice to speed you right along to Pritikin.

At dinner, you can find a chopped cactus and queso blanco salad, a mixture of roasted sweet peppers with pine nuts called raja and large, fragrant platters of ribs, stews and things mole. The loin of pork in mole verde is a serving of moist cumin heaven with a halo of pale-green pumpkin-seed sauce.

The large order of salsa and tortillas couldn’t be fresher (or more generous at $1.50). The duo of guacamole and chips ($3.50) was marred by too much salt. Sabroso is a sweet little cafe with loads of tasty things. Only one mystery, one cautionary note, remains. The blue corn atole, that pre-Columbian gruel, should only be ordered by those of you who enjoy licking the spoon of raw muffin mix.

Sabroso, 1029 W . Washington Blvd., Venice. (213) 399-3832. Tuesday - Sunday, 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. and 6 - 10 p.m. Personal checks and cash only. Street parking.

Homarus Makes New York Supplier Connection

If your fantasies point you to the sea, to the Faroe Islands or less far north, to upper Broadway, you’ll be pleased to know that the prime smoked fish suppliers to that New York deli palace Zabar’s now have an outpost in West Los Angeles, Homarus. You’ll find silky, glorious North Atlantic smoked salmon (smoked with hickory, maple and oak at $18.95 per pound, $16.95 per pound for a whole fish) and lots of other things.

Maybe not as elegant, but also delicious, are the salmon trimmings at $5 a pound. There’s wonderful robust sweet smoked tuna ($13 per pound), a rosy-fleshed sturgeon ($14), smoked trout with a tantalizing hint of maple and firm whitefish ($8 per pound) that hits the golden mean.

What not to try? The smoked salmon pate is rich and frothy, but the smoked trout variety is a dead ringer for fish halvah. The smoked eel tasted like smoked rubber. And the smoked shrimp and smoked scallops (the former $1.25 apiece, the latter $17.95 per pound) lack the sublimity of Homarus’ smoked sides of fish. Still, if you believe fish is brain food, here’s a way to go to the head of the class.

Homarus, 9340 West Pico Blvd. (one block east of Beverly Drive) (213) 273-3004. Open Tuesday - Friday, 1 - 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. MasterCard and Visa. Parking lot.