Tour de Tamale : Seven spots where the cornmeal favorite can be found--with a wide range of recipes.

The Christmas season means a festival of specialty foods for the many ethnic groups scattered throughout the Southland. One of the most enduring holiday traditions involves the tamale, a protean, masa-based dish consumed with particular fervor at this time of year.

Protean because the tamale is known to assume different shapes, sizes and flavors, depending on which part of the Spanish-speaking world we refer to. In Mexico alone, tamales can be steamed in their husks, cooked in a clay pit, wrapped in banana leaves or oven-baked. And in countries such as Guatemala, Cuba, Peru or El Salvador, tamales are made with a tempting variety of piquant fillings.

On a recent round of local tamale tastings, I found a wealth of delicious examples. Should you want to serve any of these for the holiday season, it would be best to get your order in as soon as possible.

Believe it. Santa Ana’s El Metate estimates that it will sell 100,000-plus tamales over the next two weeks. Smaller restaurants I visited expect to have all the business they can handle too.

So without further ado, here are tasting notes on seven local tamales and a description of their subtle and not-so-subtle differences.

El Metate

Since this Latino food superstore is king of local tamale production, it is the natural place to start. El Metate isn’t a restaurant per se. You order at the grocery checkout, then stake your claim to one of the plastic-covered tables in the sun-drenched dining area. A server will bring the food to you.

Anyone familiar with the Tex-Mex style of cooking is going to recognize this tamale. El Metate serves it ranchera style, smothered in a dusky, penetrating red sauce redolent of crushed red chili, topped with shredded yellow cheese.

These tamales are served in a cornhusk. They are relatively large for Mexican-style tamales, composed of a coarse masa (cornmeal) filled with either chunked pork, beef or chicken. I had the pork tamale, which must have weighed a good 5 ounces. One would be a substantial snack. Two make a hearty lunch.

El Metate, 838 E. 1st St., Santa Ana. (714) 542-3913. Tamales, $1.50, or $17.16/dozen.

El Pupu Sodromo

This Salvadoran restaurant serves tamales in a setting dominated by colorful murals and pulsating Latin music. The restaurant serves two distinct types of tamales, both popular throughout most of Central America.

The first type is tamale de elote, a simple, honey-sweetened corn tamale steamed in a cornhusk. The other, and more substantial one, uses cooked masa harina (corn flour). This time, the masa is wrapped in a banana leaf and stuffed with pork or chicken, plus green bean, olive and chunked potato.

The sweet tamales are small and cylindrical. The savory ones are almost rectangular and come with a mild, grainy tomato and cumin-spiced salsa. Either way, you win.

El Pupu Sodromo, 819 S. Main St., Santa Ana. (714) 542-3001. Pork or chicken tamales, $1.85; tamale de elote, $1.50.

Taco Mesa

Ivan Calderon is one of the most imaginative Latino chefs in the Southland, so it stands to reason that he wouldn’t serve you just any ordinary tamale. Taco Mesa makes them by hand, in several varieties. The only downside is that only one or two types are likely to be available on a given day, unless they are specially ordered in advance.

Taco Mesa’s chicken tamale is made by steaming bright orange masa in a banana leaf. When it is served, the toppings--pale green tomatillo salsa and crumbled milk-white cotija cheese--give it a highly artistic blush. Sometimes, there is a highly unusual tamale filled with shrimp, crab and zucchini.

Tamales aren’t generally on Taco Mesa’s regular menu, but the good news is that you will find one or two of them on the specials board daily.

Taco Mesa, 647 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa, (949) 642-0629, and 3533 E. Chapman Blvd., Orange, (714) 633-3922. Tamales, $2.14, or $20/dozen.

Korikancha

In Peru, where they are sometimes known as humitas, the tamales tend to be quite elaborate. Peruvian tamales can contain almost anything--pork, chicken, beef, sausage, eggs, raisins, olives, even peanuts.

Korikancha has the ambience of an eccentric coffee shop, punctuated by a sound system that plays lots of flighty Andean music. The tamale here is a dense, sweet yellow cornmeal hors d’oeuvre filled with shredded chicken, chopped green olive and cooked egg. It is also huge, and you get it with a shredded onion salad dressed with lots of vinegar and cilantro, which turns it into a complete meal.

Korikancha, 1714 E. McFadden Ave., Santa Ana. (714) 543-3600. Tamale, $4.50.

Cafe El Cholo

This most venerable and high-quality Mexican restaurant serves a tamale that hasn’t changed since the Salisbury family began preparing it at the original El Cholo in Los Angeles, more than 70 years ago.

The La Habra Cafe El Cholo, a spinoff of the original restaurant, is a cozy hacienda filled with palm fronds, folk art and beautiful tapestries.

From May to October, the restaurant serves wonderful green corn tamales that are stuffed with cheddar cheese and Ortega chilies and baked in their own cornhusks. In winter months, you have to content yourselves with one of the cafe’s hearty beef tamales, a large cylinder filled with chunked beef, drenched in a mild, thick red sauce.

Every time I come here, I order a combinacion, so that I can have my antojito with the restaurant’s exemplary refried beans and Spanish rice.

Cafe El Cholo, 840 E. Whittier Blvd., La Habra. (562) 691-4618. Tamale, $3.65.

Tikal

This isn’t a restaurant at all, but a combination gift store and grocery. The ownership is Guatemalan, and on Saturdays, the store sells two types of traditionally Guatemalan tamales. Come early, because the store often sells out.

One of these tamales is probably the best one I tasted while doing this research. It is made of meltingly soft masa that is first cooked, then steamed in a banana leaf. The filling is richly larded pork in big, soft chunks. Tikal’s other tamale is less expensive and quite a bit more mundane. It is a stiffer cornmeal cooked in a husk, filled with shredded chicken and chilipin, a type of spinach that grows in Central America.

Tikal, 502 W. 17th St., Santa Ana. (714) 647-9825. Chicken tamale, $1.09; pork tamale, $1.59.

Felix Continental Cafe

The Orange traffic circle location, homey ambience and Third World prices have made this Cuban restaurant a local institution. Most people come for the roasted pork leg or garlic chicken Cubano, but the tamales are fine too.

This tamale is rectangular and a bit too firm, and there isn’t a whole lot of meat in the center. But I love the Cuban sofrito of tomatoes, onions and spices that is baked in. And you can’t beat the $1.25 price tag. Buen provecho.

Felix Continental Cafe, 36 Plaza Square, Orange. (714) 633-5842. Tamale, $1.25.